Ok so the latest crisis has divided many of us on this board. Reading page after page of opinions and selective blogs can be tiresome and speaking for myself, I don't read half of what I know I'm not going to agree with! It is said the camera doesn't lie, so please use my thread to post pictures or links to pictures that leave a bad (or good) taste in your mouth.  So from here onwards no words please, only the source url of the picture.

I'll start it off....

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/news/archives/2006/07/20/an_explosive_image_in_lebanon_conflict.html

Sorry, James, but I won't play the Arab media game of posting out of context photos. If after my response to your posting of that photo there are others who want to try to make their case for the immensely longterm and complex Middle East by isolated photos that "don't lie," be my guest. Actually there is very little that lies like a photo can. A micro-second image, where each of four edges is determined by the photographer and then later by the person who crops it. It cannot be anything but a partial (at best) truth. Why, sometimes, photos are even staged!

Here's a fuller version of how that photo came to be from http://adloyada.typepad.com/adloyada/2006/07/how_to_demonize.html:

The image above caused a huge storm of outrage in the Arab blogosphere. Huge. You wouldn't believe how huge. The widely-read Gulf-based Palestinian blogger who was the first to post it received so much traffic that he had to move the photo to another server. Many others, including several I know personally, posted it and expressed their disgust. Israeli children taught to hate! Lebanese children are dying and they're happy! They're no better than... (fill in the blank, I don't want to go there).

Below is the story behind the photo - from the source.

I phoned Sebastian Scheiner, the Israeli photojournalist who took the photo for Associated Press (AP), explained that the image had given a really terrible impression and asked for the context. He sketched it out quickly and fluidly, but asked me not to quote him. So I spoke with Shelly Paz, a Yedioth Ahronoth reporter who was also at the scene and agreed immediately to go on record. She was quite shocked to learn how badly the photo had been misinterpreted and misrepresented; and she told me the same story Sebastian did, but with more details and nuance.

The little girls shown drawing with felt markers on the tank missiles are residents of Kiryat Shmona, which is right on the border with Lebanon. And when I say "on the border," I'm not kidding; there's little more space between their town and Southern Lebanon than there is between the back gardens of neighbouring houses in a wealthy American suburb.

No, how close is it really?

Well, there's a famous story in Israel, from the time when the Israeli army occupied Southern Lebanon: a group of soldiers stationed inside southern Lebanon used their mobile phones to order pizza from Kiryat Shmona and have it delivered to the fence that separates the two countries.

Anyway.

Kiryat Shmona has been under constant bombardment from South Lebanon since the first day of the conflict. It was a ghost town, explained Shelly. There was not a single person on the streets and all the businesses were closed. The residents who had friends, family or money for alternate housing out of missile range had left, leaving behind the few who had neither the funds nor connections that would allow them to escape the missiles crashing and booming on their town day and night. The noise was terrifying, people were dying outside, the kids were scared out of their minds and they had been told over and over that some man named Nasrallah was responsible for their having to cower underground for days on end.

On the day that photo was taken, the girls had emerged from the underground bomb shelters for the first time in five days. A new army unit had just arrived in the town and was preparing to shell the area across the border. The unit attracted the attention of twelve photojournalists - Israeli and foreign. The girls and their families gathered around to check out the big attraction in the small town - foreigners. They were relieved and probably a little giddy at being outside in the fresh air for the first time in days. They were probably happy to talk to people. And they enjoyed the attention of the photographers.

Apparently one or some of the parents wrote messages in Hebrew and English on the tank shells to Nasrallah. "To Nasrallah with love," they wrote to the man whose name was for them a devilish image on television - the man who mockingly told Israelis, via speeches that were broadcast on Al Manar and Israeli television, that Hezbollah was preparing to launch even more missiles at them. That he was happy they were suffering.

The photograpers gathered around. Twelve of them. Do you know how many that is? It's a lot. And they were all simultaneously leaning in with their long camera lenses, clicking the shutter over and over. The parents handed the markers to the kids and they drew little Israeli flags on the shells. Photographers look for striking images, and what is more striking than pretty, innocent little girls contrasted with the ugliness of war? The camera shutters clicked away, and I guess those kids must have felt like stars, especially since the diversion came after they'd been alternately bored and terrified as they waited out the shelling in their bomb shelters.

Shelly emphasized several times that none of the parents or children had expressed any hatred toward the Lebanese people. No-one expressed any satisfaction at knowing that Lebanese were dying - just as Israelis are dying. Their messages were directed at Nasrallah. None of those people was detached or wise enough to think: "Hang on, tank shell equals death of human beings." They were thinking, tank shell equals stopping the missiles that land on my house. Tank shells will stop that man with the turban from threatening to kill us.

And besides, none of those children had seen images of dead people - either Israeli or Lebanese. Israeli television doesn't broadcast them, nor do the newspapers print them. Even when there were suicide bombings in Israel several times a week for months, none of the Israeli media published gory photos of dead or wounded people. It's a red line in Israel. Do not show dead, bleeding, torn up bodies because the families of the dead will suffer and children will have nightmares. And because it is just in bad taste to use suffering for propaganda purposes.

Those kids had seen news footage of destroyed buildings and infrastructure, but not of the human toll. They had heard over and over that the air force was destroying the buildings that belonged to Hezbollah, the organization responsible for shelling their town and threatening their lives. How many small children would be able to make the connection between tank shells and dead people on their own? How many human beings are able to detach from their own suffering and emotional stress and think about that of the other side? Not many, I suspect.

So, perhaps the parents were not wise when they encouraged their children to doodle on the tank shells. They were letting off a little steam after being cooped up - afraid, angry and isolated - for days. Sometimes people do silly things when they are under emotional stress. Especially when they fail to understand how their childish, empty gesture might be interpreted.

I've been thinking for the last two days about this photo and the storm of reaction it set off. I worry about the climate of hate that would lead people to look at it and automatically assume the absolute worst - and then use the photo to dehumanize and victimize. I wonder why so many people seem to take satisfaction in believing that little Israeli girls with felt markers in their hands - not weapons, but felt markers - are evil, or spawned by an evil society. I wonder how those people would feel if Israelis were to look at a photo of a Palestinian child wearing a mock suicide belt in a Hamas demonstration and conclude that all Palestinians - nay, all Arabs - are evil.

And I wonder why it is so difficult to think a little, to get it into our heads that television news and photojournalism manipulate our thoughts and emotions.

Links to anti-Israel websites with that photo placed prominently next to the image of a dead Lebanese child have been sent to me several times. Someone has been rushing around the Israeli blogosphere, leaving the link to one particularly abhorrent site in the comments boxes. And it makes me really sad that the emotional climate has deteriorated to this point.

The moderates of the Middle East are locked in a battle with the extremists. And look what they did to the moderates. Without blinking, without thinking, we fell victim to the classic "divide and conquer" technique. We work hard for months and years to build connections, develop our societies, educate ourselves, promote democracy and free speech... And they destroy it all, in less than a week. And we let them.

Okay now I will do the equally meaningless in posting this photo. I don't think it is the moral equivalent of the photo you posted. And I think you'd be hard pressed to locate those equivalent photos though the Guardian will do its level best to convince you of their existence. Is this really the game we should be playing? I think the words matter more but that's just me.

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin

Exactly Lets, I agree, indeed it does leave a bad taste "manipulating children in this way". I think that is the problem with just using pictures-- right here. No?

 By definition :Photographic manipulation as a tool utilized by propagandists is characterized by use of images to manipulate the minds of viewers.

Slightly off-topic here, but put your hands up everyone here who just hates (hates it to hell) seeing children holding up placards at demos or 'participating' in marches.

Hate hate hate it, Hero. Of course, I'm also not big on adults with signs but that's just me. I have never carried a sign of any sort though I have carried a camera to more than one protest - rally - march.

Now the Guardian story. What did they title it? -- "An explosive image in Lebanon conflict" Being no fan of the Guardian, I begin with a distrust. Just look at the headline. Better still, read it. Uh huh, it's an "explosive image." And did you know the name of this "event?" It's the "Lebanon conflict."

I've heard it said that when a tourist goes to Northern Ireland, asking the location of a given street or point of interest by either one name or another will identify the supposed sympathies of the asker be they English or Irish. And so it was with the American Civil War and still is for many -- battles were given different names by the North and by the South for the same event. In fact I just showed my hand as having Northern sympathies by calling it the Civil War. Were I a Southern sympathizer, I might have called it The War of Northern Aggression.

So I would not call this the "Lebanon Conflict" -- that is unless the Lebanese do as they are threatening and join up with Hezbollah forces to fight Israelis. But even then... Nah, I think it is more accurate to call it the War of Hezbollah Aggression perhaps.

As we read on in the Guardian story we learn that (gasp - who knew???) children can be manipulated! What is the worst example they could find? The most instructive image they could locate that demonstrates that reality? Not Palestinian children's TV programming where cartoons implore little kids to become shaheeds like Mohammed Dura. Nope. The most offensive photo they could find was of those nasty little manipulated Israeli kids "raised with hatred instead of milk." Not that the Guardian itself is making that point. No way. They're just "reporting" and giving links. Then a link to the Greek blogger with all the dead children accompanying the smiling Israelis. "Israeli children send their love to Lebanese children."

But of course the Guardian wants to tell both sides of the story in the tradition of the long lost art of journalistic integrity. So they include the shorter version of my longer version above -- the one with all the words, you know -- wherein we learn a little about the hatred in the Middle East by closely examining this extreme example. The example of Israeli children writing to the leader of a internationally recognized terror organization -- one which has threatened the lives of these children and their parents for 20+ years and one that publicly declares in every official decree that its central objective is to dispatch with every Jew in the region.

Yes, that was some incisive reporting! That really pinpoints the problem. Talk about getting to the heart of the matter...

Susan

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin