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Monday, August 07, 2006

Israel-Hezbollah Roundup: Fake Foto & More

Notice something strange about the smoke plumes in this Reuters photograph of Beirut after an Israeli air strike? I did, and more importantly, so did Charles Johnson, who runs Little Green Footballs, a conservative and unabashedly pro-Israeli website.
What seemed wrong to me was the perfect symmetry of the plumes. Bombing runs are assymmetrical things. This just doesn't happen.
Johnson looked closer, realized that the plumes and buildings beneath it had been cut and pasted, and blew the whistle on the Reuters freelance photographer, whom the news service said it has suspended.

But wait. There's more.

In response to his query to Reuters about the photo, Johnson received an email from someone using a Reuters account who wrote:
I look forward to the day when you [Jewish] pigs get your throats cut.
Reuters said it had looked into the matter and suspended the employee.
It is unclear -- at least to me -- if Reuters has now suspended two people or the photographer and hate emailer are one and the same.
NAVIGATING THE JEWISH MINEFIELD
Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo hits a raw nerve in mulling why many current affairs blogs have been relatively silent on the Israel-Hezbollah war.
Kiko's House is in that camp because I don't haven't had a lot to say about the war that the MSM isn't reporting, and I try to pick and choose subjects of which I have some knowledge.
Josh is more or less of that schoo, but this is too pat an answer for him. He then takes it a deeper:

[A]s this war has progressed I've realized there's something more at work in my writing process. At first I wasn't quite sure what it was. And then it became clear to me a little more than a week ago.

I'm hearing two streams of conversation about the war -- two whole worlds of conversation and debate, you might say, often as distinct from each other as night and day.

One is the one we all see every day in the mainstream news -- the major papers and news networks and so on. And then there's another -- one I'm exposed to largely, but not exclusively, through email we get at TPM.

And it's this latter conversation that's engaged my attention, rattled me and intensified and deepened my belief in Zionism.

There's a whole detailed and after a while sterile debate about what sort of criticism of Israel amounts to "anti-Semitism" and what doesn't. Suffice it to say that many of these emails have breathed a tone of hostility and double-standard toward Israel specifically and sometimes Jews generally that have left my head spinning.

. . . But when I have written in response to this vitriol, I realize my response seems out of context and in a sense out of left field. Because what is it exactly I'm responding to? When I attack this or that double standard Israel is held to or the subterranean animus against the Jewish state am I really talking about anything you see in the Post or on ABC News? Hardly. It's almost like responding to an offensive radio broadcast that few of the people around you can here. And it is this disjuncture that I think has held me back from writing about the topic more than I have. Because in the mainstream debate I find myself very critical of Israeli policy on many issues -- particularly on the territories and particularly since 1996 -- and trying to wrestle with and figure out some way to pull the region back from the brink to which this administration has brought it. And then in this other debate I find myself driven back upon my core belief in the Zionist project and Jews' right to fight for their existence. And these are two points of departure for conversation that are, to put it mildly, difficult to speak from at the same time. It's a dissonance that's clogged my writing. But I'm going to work harder to overcome it.
My initial post on the war -- Israel: A Tale of Three Davids -- resulted in a furious denuciation from a Jewish reader with whom I have had a long correspondence.
At first I was taken aback. What had I said? After all, I had noted that I would defend Israel with my life. I then got angry because it was obvious that he was using the all too familiar tactic of attacking me because I had dared to suggest that the Israeli and its government were not above criticism.

This has had a stiffling effect on me. But like Josh, I'm going to navigate the minefield that writing about Israel represents and try to sort things out.
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2 comments:

  1. Anonymous5:24 PM

    I've been quiet on it mostly because I just can't take one more middle east conflict in my brain right now.

    I believe that Israel's retaliation was out of proportion. I believe the Lebanese government should have been doing more to assert its authority in its own country, and not be used as a staging area. I believe that the Palestinians have a right to a place to live. I believe that Israel has a right to exist.

    I believe that more than a few of these beliefs are contradictory, and if I can’t figure this out in my own head, how on earth can I blog about it other than to say, I have only two reactions anymore. One hopeful, one not. Part of me wishes that they could find a way to live with each other. Another part of me wants us to launch a whole lot of nukes right into the whole Syria/Lebanon/Israel area and get rid of that problem once and for all.

    Except that it wouldn’t.

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  2. Shaun Mullen6:56 AM

    You have covered an awful lot of ground in a few words, LaPopessa.

    Some of the beliefs that we share are contradictory, which makes me crazy because I want to say and do the right thing.

    The only thing that I would add is that Hezbollah should be crushed like a bug. Not because it is against Israel and world Jewry, but because it is a terrorist organization and ultimately is against why I believe in.

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