CNN reporter who "confirmed" fake beheaded Israeli babies story promoted Libya intervention propaganda in 2011

12 years before Sara Sidner helped pave the way for ethnic cleansing in Gaza, she generated "mass hysteria" about rape to justify NATO's Libya intervention

On the morning of October 11, CNN correspondent Sara Sidner announced on air that allegations that Hamas militants had beheaded forty Israeli babies in the Kfar Aza kibbutz were true.

“We have some really disturbing new information out of Israel. The Israeli prime minister spokesman just confirmed babies and toddlers were found with their heads decapitated in Kfar Aza in southern Israel after Hamas attacks in the kibbutz over the weekend,” she declared. “That has been confirmed by the prime minister’s office.”

Meanwhile, reporters on the ground refuted Sidner’s dubious claim.

Israeli journalist Oren Ziv, who visited Kfar Aza in the aftermath of the attack, tweeted about the beheaded babies allegation, saying that “During the tour we didn’t see any evidence of this, and the army spokesperson or commanders also didn’t mention any such incidents.”

Similarly, Haaretz’s Anshell Pfeffer reported from Kfar Aza and mentioned nothing about beheaded babies.

As the obviously false story fell apart, CNN published another report directly contradicting Sidner’s on-air announcement.

“Israeli official says government cannot confirm babies were beheaded in Hamas attack,” read the headline.

Early on October 12, discredited by multiple reports and her own outlet, she issued an apology on Twitter, saying “Yesterday the Israeli Prime Minister's office said that it had confirmed Hamas beheaded babies & children while we were live on the air. The Israeli government now says today it CANNOT confirm babies were beheaded. I needed to be more careful with my words and I am sorry.”

Sidner’s mea culpa was too little and too late. The beheaded babies canard was circulating through virtually all western media outlets, dominating the discourse, generating bloodlust for Gaza’s besieged population, and providing a convenient distraction from the non-stop feed of images of men, women and children – beheaded babies among them - slaughtered by Israeli carpet bombing.

While Sidner was forced to apologize for partaking in Benjamin Netanyahu’s decapitation deception, she has a history of promoting grotesque war propaganda.

In 2011, she published a report claiming that Libyan forces loyal to President Muammar Gaddafi were raping women. Live on air, she presented a phone said to contain a video of a woman being gang-raped, gratuitously playing audio of a woman shouting.

Sidner published the report despite admitting that “we have been unable to verify its authenticity, we don't know where it was taken or by whom… there is no date on the video and the men in the video are not military uniforms.” She added that “the victims face is barely seen, so we are not able to identify her.”

Nonetheless, she insisted “all we can do is watch it and listen to it.”

Sidner’s claims about Gaddafi’s forces engaging in rape were used by top Obama administration officials to gin up support for the intervention that plunged Libya into a civil war that rages on to this day.

On June 17, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, apparently referring to Sidner’s report, expressed concern that rape was being used as a weapon of war.

UN ambassador Susan Rice told the UN Security Council weeks before that Gaddafi “supplies troops with Viagra to encourage mass rape.”

International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo told a press conference that "we have information that there was a policy to rape in Libya those who were against the government. Apparently he [Colonel Gaddafi] used it to punish people."

Meanwhile, international bodies and top western human rights groups poured cold water on the rape claims.

Four days after Sidner’s report was published, UN human rights investigator Cherif Bassiouni, who led an inquiry into Libya, denounced the rape claims as “massive hysteria.”

Similarly,Amnesty advisor Donatella Rovera stated that "we have not found any evidence or a single victim of rape or a doctor who knew about somebody being raped.” Human Rights Watch head of human rights Liesel Gerntholtz, came to the same conclusion, saying that,"We have not been able to find evidence.

Unlike Sidner’s beheaded babies debacle, she never apologized for airing what she knew was an unverified video that helped fuel the NATO intervention. Her credibility was spared, and she has continued serving as a war propagandist to this very day.