Photos Really Do Lie

When an explosion on a Gaza beach killed several Palestinians earlier this month, the international media didn't pause to think, research or ask questions about the incident.

As a picture of a Palestinian girl grieving over the corpse of a dead relative spread around the world and onto the front pages of newspapers like The New York Times, there was little doubt as to who was to blame for her suffering and, by extension, that of all Palestinians: the Israeli "occupiers" whose brutality had once again taken the lives of Arab innocents.

The only problem with this story, like so many others that have come out of this conflict, is that its basic premise wasn't true. Shell fragments from some of those wounded in the incident who were treated in Israeli hospitals, along with other factors, showed that the Israel Defense Forces were not responsible.

But the facts counted for little even a few days later when a credulous media accepted at face value the usual shrill accusations about Israel from Palestinian spokesmen and their leftist allies from non-governmental organizations on the ground.

There was a web site that dissected that time when they made it appear that the Israelis shot that boy and his father who was protecting him. They showed how the bullets, by the indentations on the concrete, probably came from the Palestinians. I don't remember the site but it was riveting watching the staging and set-up of the Palestinians' use of video to sway opinion.

"Who can forget the heartrending video clip of young Hadil Ghalia running over the Gaza sands, looking for her family? There are many parallels between this and the photos of 12-year-old Mohammed al-Durah, caught between Israeli and Palestinian gunfire. Yet, there are so many inconsistencies in both scenarios that we should at least stop to question the genuineness of what we are being shown.

Whether or not Hadil lost her family as the result of a stray Israeli shell, or the explosion of a Palestinian device or mine, is of little consequence. She lost her family, as young al-Durah lost his life, because she is living in a war zone. She has become a media legend, playing the starring role in a masterfully directed video clip that has been widely broadcast in the world media - pushing aside even the ubiquitous football for a few minutes. As a result, some bewildered Israelis even began to parrot a popular Israeli columnist, who noisily confessed “his shame” in Israel’s most widely-read daily. Yet the facts, both for al-Durah and for the Ghalia family, tragic as they may be, remain inconclusive. That is sometimes the nature of warfare.

Why does a terrorist cell, with a missile on board, drive through the most crowded area of Gaza - and why doesn’t anyone lift a finger to stop them? If the Palestinians mined the beach (which they admit), and if the beach is being used as a base from which to launch missiles against Israel, then why did the Palestinian authorities allow their population free access to this same beach? How is it that the photographers so conveniently happen, always, to be at the right place at the right time? These are just a few of the pertinent questions. (We could also ask, of course, why the world media doesn’t broadcast pictures from Israel’s southern town of Sderot, whose children have been traumatized and injured by over a thousand (1000) rocket attacks in the past month - all launched from inside the Gaza Strip. But that is the famous double standard at work.) "

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