What They Are Saying

Columnist Michelle Malkin writes on www.Jewish WorldReview.com Aug. 16 that images of the war in Lebanon are being manipulated by Israel's foes:

Michelle Malkin

"It's the story that the journalistic elite would rather just go away. In the aftermath of Reuters' admission that one of its photographers, Adnan Hajj, had manipulated two war images from Lebanon after bloggers smoked out his crude Photoshop alterations and all 920 of his Reuters photos were pulled, evidence of far more troubling photo staging and media deception in the Middle East continues to pour in.

"Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs (littlegreen footballs.com) calls it 'fauxtography.'

"One of Hajj's photos was an iconic image of a dusty dead child with a clean blue pacifier clipped to his shirt, paraded by a corpse handler at the site of an Israeli airstrike in Qana, Lebanon. Mainstream journalists have sneered at bloggers' suspicions ... that some of the gruesome photos from that scene may have been staged. Last week, a German television station aired damning video footage from the scene showing a lead propaganda director (dubbed the 'Green Helmet Guy') positioning a young boy's corpse, yanking it from an ambulance, placing it on two different stretchers for the cameras, and pushing bystanders out of the way for clearer shots.

"Not all photographers overseas have their heads in the sand. Middle East-based photographer Bryan Denton, whose work has appeared in The New York Times, revealed on the professional photography Web site Light Stalkers (lightstalkers.org) that he had observed routine staging of photos -- and even corpse-digging -- by Lebanese stringers:

" 'I have been witness to the daily practice of directed shots, one case where a group of wire photogs were choreographing the unearthing of bodies, directing emergency workers here and there, asking them to position bodies just so, even remove bodies that have already been put in graves so that they can photograph them in people's arms.'

"Which is probably why bloggers have noticed so many copious examples of phony-looking scenes -- from countless pristine stuffed animals lying in the foreground of destroyed buildings ... to a snow-white wedding dress on a mannequin standing in the middle of a street surrounded by piles of rubble, to intact cars photographed on Lebanese roadsides and dubiously labeled as being struck by Israeli missiles.

"Miscaptioning (which always makes Israel look worse, never Hezbollah, go figure) adds another dimension of fauxto deception. One Associated Press image of an anguished father carrying his dead 5-year-old daughter into a Gaza City hospital last week blamed the death on an Israeli airstrike. Charles Johnson found a correction of the caption revealing that the girl had been killed in a swing-set accident. I found a Reuters photo of an 18-month-old girl with two broken legs that was pulled by the wire service in late July after being included among a photo set of hospital patients injured in an Israeli air raid. In truth, the girl had been admitted for a 'routine hospitalization.' "

A Nation Looks Inward for the Truth

Columnist Max Boot writes in the Los Angeles Times (www.latimes.com) on Aug. 16 that its democratic values will strengthen Israel's defense in the long term:

Max Boot

"Even as fighting winds down in Lebanon, the sniping is only starting on the Israeli home front. Having gotten used to handily defeating their Arab foes, Israelis are understandably unhappy that this war ended in what is, at best, a stalemate. A few days ago, Ha'aretz, Israel's leading liberal daily, ran a front-page article saying Prime Minister Ehud Olmert 'must go.' Such cries are likely to intensify, along with calls to convene a commission of inquiry to investigate why Israel did not have more success in stopping the rain of terrorist rockets.

"Now will come the political reckoning. Some might see this fractiousness as a sign of weakness. Just the opposite is true. Arab societies tend to attribute their shortcomings to outsiders, a failing apparent in a meeting in Jerusalem last week with Palestinian peace negotiator Saeb Erekat, who blamed the prevalence of autocracy and theocracy in the Middle East on (who else?) the West.

"Israelis, by contrast, look within for the source of their misfortune. That allows them to correct what went wrong and get stronger in the future. This process is now under way, and Israel's enemies would be well-advised not to underestimate that nation's fighting capacity, no matter how wrenching the debate."

The Summer of Consolation: Israel Begins Process of a Reckoning

Shalem Center fellow Yossi Klein Halevi writes in The New Republic (www.tnr.com) on Aug. 15 that many Israeli hearts were broken in the last month:

Yossi Klein Halevi

"A long list of reckonings awaits the Israeli public. There's the scandal of the government's abandonment of tens of thousands of poor Israelis who lacked the means to escape the north, and were confined for weeks in public shelters, their needs largely tended to by volunteers.

"There's the growing bitterness between Jewish Israelis and Arab Israelis, many of whom supported Hezbollah in a war most Jews saw as an existential attack on the state. And there's the emergency need to resurrect the military reserves, which have been so neglected that a majority of men over 21 don't even serve anymore, and those that do tend to feel like suckers.

"Still, in the Jewish calendar, the summer weeks after the fast of the Ninth of Av, commemorating the destruction of the Temple, are a time of consolation. 'Be consoled, be consoled, my people,' we read from the Torah on the Sabbath after the fast. And so we console ourselves with the substantial achievements of the people of Israel during this month of war. First, our undiminished capacity for unity.

"My favorite symbol of that unity is the antiwar rapper, Muki, whose hit song during the era of Palestinian suicide bombings lamented the absence of justice for Palestinians but who, this time, insisted that the army needs to 'finish the job' against Hezbollah.

"Second, our middle-class children, with their cell phones, iPods and pizza deliveries to their army bases. In intimate combat, they repeatedly bested Hezbollah fighters, even though the terrorists had the advantage of familiar terrain. This generation has given us some of Israel's most powerful images of heroism, like the soldier from a West Bank settlement and father of two young children who leaped onto a grenade to save his friends, shouting the Shema -- the prayer of God's oneness -- just before the grenade exploded. Along with the recriminations, there will be many medals of valor awarded in the coming weeks.

"But the last month's fighting is only one battle in the jihadist war against Israel's homefront that began with the second intifada in September 2000. Israel won the first phase of that war, the suicide bombings that lasted until 2004.

"Now, in the second phase, we've lost the battle against the rockets. But the qualities this heartbreak has revealed -- unity and sacrifice and faith in the justness of our cause -- will ensure our eventual victory in the next, inevitable, bitter round. Such is the nature of consolation in Israel in the summer of 2006."