A contractor for a humanitarian group recounted the boy’s killing by the IDF on several popular podcasts.

Last month, several outlets reported that a boy named “Amir” was killed by the Israel Defense Forces while seeking food from a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) distribution site in May.

But it turns out the eight-year-old boy is alive and has actually been hiding out with his mother.

The child, whose real name is Abdul Rahim Muhammad Hamden, though he goes by the nickname Abboud, was believed to be dead after former GHF contractor and retired Green Beret Lt. Col. Anthony Aguilar said he saw the boy gunned down by IDF forces outside a GHF distribution site on May 28.

Aguilar, in interviews with several media outlets, described sharing a moment with Abboud at the aid site as the boy clutched bags of food. He said Abboud approached him and kissed his hand and then his face in gratitude for the food supplies. 

Aguilar told MSNBC the boy then ran back to join a group of other Palestinians who were ultimately forced to leave the aid site after pepper spray, tear gas, and stun grenades were deployed.

He recalled hearing shots fired after the Palestinians left and said when he reached the group, he found Abboud and others in the group had been shot by the IDF.

“Shot to the torso, a shot to the leg – dead,” he told YouTube channel Dialogue Works of Abboud. 

Aguilar’s story shifted several times throughout his many retellings. Aguilar first claimed the shooting happened outside GHF aid site Secure Distribution Site-1 (SDS), before later changing his story to tell MSNBC the shooting happened near SDS-2, and again shifting his narrative when he told Dialogue Works that the incident occurred outside SDS-3.

Aguilar’s story was also found to be inconsistent with a third party’s footage of the interaction. The Daily Wire obtained body camera footage from an American security contractor standing next to Aguilar at the time. The footage shows the boy walking up to the man wearing the body camera and kissing his hand. He then turns to Aguilar and appears to ask for help convincing the crowd to let them take food.

Aguilar responds by touching the boy’s shoulders and chest. “This little young man here, obviously pretty young, he has food,” Aguilar says while recording his video. “Go home, go home, okay? Thank you.”

The boy then walks away toward the crowd.

Abboud’s stepmother also refuted Aguilar’s claims that the boy had been killed in May, saying he didn’t go missing until July 28 — though it later turned out the boy merely left his stepmother’s home to stay with his birth mother.

The day Abboud went missing was the same day Aguilar first told his story about “Amir” on a podcast called Unxeptable, which has the stated mission of criticizing the Israeli government.

When the Daily Wire reached out to Aguilar questioning his story last month, he said that he saw the boy lying motionless on the ground, but could not verify his death.

“I saw Amir’s body on the ground, having fallen/dropped to the ground amidst the gunfire from the IDF, which was being fired toward the crowd as a crowd control measure to keep them moving in a westerly direction to the Morag Corridor as they left the site,” Aguilar said in an email to the outlet. “It has always been my position that he, and others, were dead. The body wasn’t moving. Others ran or limped away. I, nor anyone, could verify that he was dead.”

“Considering that he has not been found, and he has not been seen, it is safe to say that my assessment is correct,” Aguilar added.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation terminated Aguilar’s contract in June “due to poor performance, volatile conflicts with staff, and erratic behavior.” Aguilar, for his part, says he was not fired, but resigned. Since his termination, he has made clear his feelings on the conflict in Gaza. He interrupted a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing earlier this week by shouting that the “United States government is complicit in genocide.”

GHF launched an investigation into the alleged incident involving “Amir” at the end of July.

The foundation was able to track down Abboud and his mother through interviews with local Palestinians. Their identities were then verified by GHF using facial recognition software that compared images of the boy with the body cam images.

Abboud can be seen in footage obtained by Fox News playfully interacting with a GHF representative after he arrived at SDS-3 last month with his mother.

Outlets that ran Aguilar’s story, including MSNBC, Zeteo, and the Tucker Carlson Network, did not immediately respond to requests for comment from National Review.

“In late July, when Mr. Aguilar took his lies public, he splashed photos taken of the boy across global media, knowingly misrepresenting his interaction to create a false viral story,” GHF Spokesperson Chapin Fay told reporters.

“That publicity placed the child and his family squarely in the crosshairs of Hamas, who have benefited greatly from Mr. Aguilar’s lies and the media amplifying them,” he added. “If the boy was proven alive, it would unravel their propaganda, expose Mr. Aguilar’s lie, and discredit a narrative that Hamas has used to stoke outrage and violence.”

Abboud and his mother, Najlaa, were extracted from the Gaza Strip on Thursday and moved to a safe and secure location that GHF declined to disclose for their safety.