Monday, June 07, 2010

Soccer Dad

Soccer Dad

The Latest In Reuters Fauxtography--A Whole Lotta Crop

Posted: 07 Jun 2010 09:25 AM PDT

A testimony in journalistic integrity!


Here is the Reuters original photo




But that is after Reuters got done with it. Here is what the original photo looked like:



Notice the hand on the left with the knife in its hand. We can't go around showing that those 'peace activists' aboard the Mavi Marmara were armed now--can we? Context be damned. This original photo is from the IHH website, where they are proud of their work and not ashamed of showing it off.


But in addition, if you lighten that area by the hand with the knife--guess what else you find hidden from view in the Reuters photo: a second injured Israeli soldier.



Hat tip: Killgore Trout on Little Green Footballs


But that is not the only example. Here is a photo taken off the website of a Turkish newspaper.




But again, Reuters doesn't give the whole picture.



Yeah, that's much better--depending on your agenda.


Hat tip: Kilgore Trout on Little Green Footballs, who notes that in 2006, Reuters provided more of the same.


See also: HonestReporting: Special Analysis: Fauxtography - Reuters Caught Again


UPDATE: Elder Of Ziyon blows up the image of the knife Reuters crops out of the picture:


Could it be that someone didn't want anyone to notice that on board the Mavi Marmara there were 'humanitarian activists' walking around carrying commando knives?


by Daled Amos

What obama has wrought

Posted: 07 Jun 2010 04:30 AM PDT

William Shawcross writing in the Washington Examiner observes:

What Obama does not seem to understand is that his lack of support for Israel not only saps Israel -- it emboldens Israel's enemies. The Middle East and the world is now a much more dangerous place as "the sons [and daughters] of apes and pigs" are delegitimized once again -- on their way back to Auschwitz, if their enemies succeed.

William Jacobson takes this one step further:

Obama administration oratory and actions have rekindled hope for the destruction of Israel, and thereby unleashed the beast.

The damage done so far may not be irreparable, but we are on an incredibly destructive trajectory.

I really wonder whether Israel can survive a second Obama term.

The unmentioned rachels

Posted: 07 Jun 2010 04:09 AM PDT

Carl compares Rachel Corrie to a real victim.

Powerline (via instapundit) remembers other Rachels.

But if Jewish terror victims are often invisible when compared to Rache Corrie, Bret Stephens, a few years ago, wrote about a case where a terror victim was found wanting as compared to the terrorist who murdered her!

Take New York Times correspondent Joel Greenberg's April 5 dispatch, "2 Girls, Divided by War, Joined in Carnage." The story, about the parallel lives and entwined fates of supermarket suicide bomber Ayat al-Akhras and suicide bomber victim Rachel Levy, is a model of objectivity and balance. The high school seniors, a year apart in age, looked "strikingly similar." Both had black hair; both wore blue jeans. Akhras was a "top student with superior grades"; Levy had an interest in photography.

The similarities don't end there. Levy "wasn't afraid" of the terror, according to her mother. Akhras "saw the scars left by Israeli shellings and military incursions, but there were never any indications that she was slipping into despair or plotting an act of revenge." The Palestinian girl pursued a diligent routine of school, homework and housework, all with the aim of studying journalism in college. "She was quite normal," according to her father. The Jewish girl, raised in California, was obsessed with fitness, worked out to a Jane Fonda video, "tended to get stressed out." Quite normal, too. Akhras left a farewell video in which she called herself a "living martyr." Levy left behind a notebook of adolescent ruminations on love, and death.

All this is undoubtedly accurate as far as the particulars are concerned: NYT reporters are good at that. Greenberg makes no moral judgements, so the piece is "objective." And it is balanced - mathematically balanced - insofar as there are nine paragraphs devoted to each girl.

But who's kidding whom? There's a hero to this story. She's a quiet, studious, beautiful Palestinian girl, with a rich and mysterious inner life, who one day bids a nonchalant farewell to her classmates, leaves a "grim warren of alleys and tightly packed dwellings," and commits something perfectly abrupt and terrible, in the stylized manner of ritual Japanese suicide or a French art-house film. The Rachel Levy of Greenberg's telling is, by contrast, just another transplanted JAP.

What was so offensive about helen thomas's remarks?

Posted: 06 Jun 2010 11:30 PM PDT

I was unaware of the story behind Helen Thomas's outburst against Jews.

But I wonder what was wrong about what she said. My co-blogger JudeoPundit writes:

Israelis constitute a unique nationality and for the most part they are natives to their land. (A "native" is someone who was born in a certain place.) There is a country called Germany, but the "home" for Israel's Jews called "Germany" is a chimera, a myth. Calling on someone to return to an imaginary home is akin to calling for him to breath imaginary air. It is a polite way of regarding him as having no legitimate interests, no humanity. Helen Thomas has not renounced her belief in such murderous fairy-tales. Why should she? She is at home in a vast and respectable mob.

I don't disagree, but still what's so offensive about her comments. True Hamas praised her. And the Hamas groupies who sailed in the flotilla expressed a somewhat more offensive version of her statement.

After years of pretending that Yasser Arafat was a moderate, the Clinton administration was surprised at the Camp David summit in July 2000:

The main sticking point remained the Temple Mount, known to Arabs as Haram al-Sharif.

Mr. Arafat has been saying since the Camp David talks, when the question of sovereignty over the site was raised, that the Temple does not exist, a senior administration official said. By insisting that what the Jews consider to be the most sacred of their holy sites was not even a Jewish place, Mr. Arafat was denying a basic respect to his main negotiating partner, the official said.

''This can't be solved by denying the beliefs of one of the great religions,'' the official said.

For Jews, the Temple Mount is the most sacred of all places, the site of the First and Second Temples destroyed by the Babylonians and the Romans. Among the Muslims, the site and its two Muslim shrines, the Dome of the Rock and Al Aksa Mosque, are among the holiest of all sites.

Even at that, this was not generally seen as proof that Yasser Arafat held extremist beliefs but rather a quaint quirk or perhaps a tragic flaw in an otherwise noble character.

Yesterday, Thomas Friedman told us that the really important stuff happening in the Middle East is the institution building done by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, for they were creating the necessary institutions for Palestinian statehood. Never mind that for the first 15 or so post-Oslo years, Friedman's only necessary condition for a Palestinian state was Israeli concessions. Now the Palestinian national project is in the hands of "moderates."

But last year we learned that "moderate" Abbas did not believe in the idea of a Jewish State:

The Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, on Monday dismissed a demand by Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, underscoring the considerable gaps between the sides.

"I do not accept it," Mr. Abbas said in a speech in Ramallah, in the West Bank. "It is not my job to give a description of the state. Name yourself the Hebrew Socialist Republic -- it is none of my business," he added, according to Reuters.

And as I pointed out to Daniel Pipes, neither man has presided over a new Palestinian Charter that accepts the history of Israel as a Jewish state. Yet both are referred to as "moderates."

Helen Thomas, then, didn't say anything offensive. The belief she espoused isn't the problem, it's that she's a Westerner who did. For some arbitrary reason, denying Jewish history is offensive for her to do; had she been a Palestinian politician there'd have been nothing wrong with her statement.

Joe Klein, (via memeorandum) who now tells Helen Thomas to go to the back of the room, regularly vilifies Israel and those defenders of Israel, who - for good reason - are skeptical about the intents of the Palestinians.

The question isn't really what was offensive about Helen Thomas's remarks, but what's innocuous about similar remarks made by Palestinian leadership? If it's wrong for an individual to say that Jews don't belong in Israel, aren't you courting disaster by creating a neighboring state founded on that very principle?

Finally, Helen Thomas is 89 years old. I can't believe this is the first time she's made her feelings about Israel clear. For years everyone in the media deferred to her for her wit and wisdom. And now all of a sudden she's a pariah? Puh-lease! Our MSM has been covering for this woman for years, it's only now that she's been caught that they're keeping their distance.

Crossposted on Yourish.

Other than *that* president obama, how was the irony?

Posted: 06 Jun 2010 10:53 PM PDT

Yesterday, President Obama observed D-Day by going to the theatre. Ford's Theatre, to be exact. (via memeorandum) The bestowing of the Lincoln medal upon two anti-apartheid activists. To Don Surber it's a sign of the President's increasing detachment.

I wish it were so benign.

One of those being honored was Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

What happens when you Google "Desmond Tutu" and "Israel"?

From 2002:

Apartheid in the Holy Land | World news | The Guardian Apr 29, 2002
... Desmond Tutu: In our struggle against apartheid, ... Israel has three options: revert to the previous stalemated situation; exterminate all ...

From 2003:

Israel: Time to Divest by Desmond Tutu
Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu calls for international campaigners to treat Israel as they treated apartheid South Africa. ...

From 2009:

Tutu to Haaretz: Arabs paying the price of the Holocaust - Haaretz ...Aug 28, 2009 ... Nobel Prize laureate says Israel must learn it will never get security ... Emeritus Desmond Tutu of South Africa told Haaretz Thursday. ...

And to be perfectly up to date:

Tutu condemns Israel aid-boat attack - Times LIVEMay 31, 2010 ...
Anglican Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu and a group of retired global leaders have joined international leaders in condemning the Israeli ...

Archbishop Tutu, did find time to meet with terrorist leader Ismail Haniyeh and to blame 9/11 on American trade policies.

President Obama said of Archbishop Tutu and his fellow honoree, South African Constitutional Court Justice Albie Sachs...

"There are few people so deserving of the Lincoln Medal," Obama said of the two honorees.

Somehow I wouldn't imagine that President Lincoln would condemn the only democracy in a hostile region, meet with terrorists and espouse crackpot theories. Perhaps President Obama knows better. But I doubt it.

Finally, why Archbishop Tutu? Was Judge Richard Goldstone unavailable?

Crossposted on Yourish.
Posted by Soccer Dad at 11:07 PM

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)