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Washington Post defends picture of dead Gaza child after complaints from ‘Jews in large numbers’

On Nov. 14, an Israeli warhead struck a house in Gaza City and killed an infant, Omar Masharawi, 11 months old. His father Jiwad Masharawi works for BBC in Gaza. A photo of him grieving his son’s death, taken by the AP (below), was widely circulated and appeared on the front page of the Washington Post on Nov. 15.

Washington Post photo

Today the Washington Post ombudsman Patrick Pexton, whom we have praised before for straightforwardness, defends the publication of the photo, saying there were no photos of Israeli child deaths to “balance” this image. And who was complaining? Pexton refers to complaints by “American Jews in large numbers.”

But many Post readers saw it differently. Jewish groups and American Jews in large numbers wrote to the ombudsman and to Post editors, protesting the photo as biased…

[They] asked why The Post didn’t balance the photo of the grieving father with one of Israelis who had lost a loved one from the Gaza rocket fire. That’s a valid question.

The answer is that The Post cannot publish photographs that don’t exist. No Israeli civilian had been killed by Gaza rocket fire since Oct. 29, 2011, more than a year earlier. The first Israeli civilian deaths from Gaza rocket fire in 2012 did not take place until Nov. 15, when Hamas, the group that controls Gaza, began firing more accurate and deadly missiles in response to the Israeli offensive that had begun the day before. There were no recent photos of Israeli casualties to be had on the night of Nov. 14.”

The front-page photo on Nov. 15 told not the whole story of the Gaza conflict, no, but certainly a telling and important part of the truth.

Let’s leave aside the overwhelming ratio of Palestinian civilian deaths to Israeli civilian deaths in Cast Lead and Pillar of Cloud, the last two Israeli conflicts with Gazan militants, and what that says about this “biased” photo. 

Pexton raises a delicate and important issue. By identifying the religion of complaint-writers (on what basis I can only surmise; hey, I also guess at last names), he is saying that American Jews support Israel overwhelmingly. Well, it is on this basis that some have blamed the American Jewish collective for Israel’s behavior, and said that any American Jewish organization is responsible for the human rights atrocities Israel is committing. I am saying that Pexton’s generalization could foster anti-Semitism, as more and more Americans are disgusted by Israel’s actions and look around for who to blame for Israel’s impunity from accountability.

Which leads to my challenge. Isn’t it time that American media organizations and American Jewish groups began pulling apart the issue of To what extent the American Jewish community is married to Israel? I.e., When did Zionism (Jewish nationalism) ravish the Jewish community, and why? How many American Jews are no longer drinking that potion? I think the answer is, Many object to Israel’s conduct. And it’s time we heard from them. Because their argument is persuasive, and because an open fight among American Jews over Israel’s conduct will help everyone. More later.

(P.S. In fairness, once sharing Pexton’s generalization, I used to do posts saying that there are too many Jews on the Israel beat in our newspapers and too many Jews at the Council on Foreign Relations. I dropped that line because it was imprecise and because I came to believe, based on all the anti-Zionists I was meeting, that there is actual diversity inside the Jewish community. The media ought to foster that diversity by reporting on it.)

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There’s something quite disturbing about a mentality which objects to the publication of a photo of a grieving father because – let’s be quite frank here – he and his dead baby were of the ‘wrong’ ethnicity. Would any of these ‘readers’ be complaining if the WP published a similar photo of an Israeli Jew and asking for it to be ‘balanced’ by a photo of a Palestinian in a similar situation? Of course they would not.

It seems that many American Jews cry foul when even a tiny fraction of the suffering the Holy State has inflicted on the Palestinians is revealed. Like I say, it’s rather a sick mentality.

The picture worth a thousand words. Phil Up with Chris Hayes went even further this morning on this issue than ever before. Abbas “got rolled” Illegal settler numbers in the West Bank, undermining of Abbas, Palestinians choice to “rot slowly” or go down in a “blaze of glory”.

In addition, Pexton explicitly gives an important fact from the timeline of events:
The first Israeli civilian deaths from Gaza rocket fire in 2012 did not take place until Nov. 15, when Hamas, the group that controls Gaza, began firing more accurate and deadly missiles in response to the Israeli offensive that had begun the day before.

No doubt he will be hearing further from “Jewish groups and American Jews in large numbers” about this egregious episode of truth-telling.

Pexton also could have reviewed the Post’s files for photos of suicide bombings in Israel, and noted that those photos were not accompanied by recent photos of Israeli shelling in the OPT that did exist. This demand for “even-handedness” by supporters of Israel is ludicrous given the history of MSM coverage of the conflict. It is akin to the demand for “equality” on behalf of a country that treats its citizens and non-citizen subjects so unequally.

“By identifying the religion of complaint-writers (on what basis I can only surmise; hey, I also guess at last names), he is saying that American Jews support Israel overwhelmingly. Well, it is on this basis that some have blamed the American Jewish collective for Israel’s behavior, and said that any American Jewish organization is responsible for the human rights atrocities Israel is committing. I am saying that Pexton’s generalization could foster anti-Semitism, as more and more Americans are disgusted by Israel’s actions and look around for who to blame for Israel’s impunity from accountability. “…Phil

Have to relate something from the Up with Chris show this am on MSNBC.
The program was about Gaza, Pal, Isr ,USA…..two guest were Rep Steve Cohen and Katrina from the Nation. Rep Cohen made the remark that Jews in his district really, really, cared about Israel, it was an issue with them, but that non Jews in the new district ( redrawn district which is less Jewish) were more sympathic with the Palestines. I was startled that he said this on national TV but he did. I don’t know why he said it except that perhaps he had honestly (had some kind of awakening) not been aware that non Jewish sentiments about Israel were different from the Jewish sentiments until he was exposed to opinions in a district that was not predominately Jewish.
There was talk of AIPAC also as the seat of much of the I-First and Israeli right wing influence.
There will probably be a video or transcript of the show available and it’s worth seeing.

As for Pexton’s public statements on Jewish objections to showing Israel’s actions and Cohens public remarks about Israel and US support for it being in fact important to the majority of Jews in his district and these revelations arousing anti semitism—-I don’t know what you can do about that when it is said by people like Pexton and Cohen. The only way I see would be to expose a real, real fight ‘between Jews’ in the MSM.
In the meanwhile it doesn’t do a whole of good to say most Jews don’t support what is going on with Israel whether it’s true or not cause the public isn’t getting that message. Although that may be the limit of what you can do right now and I don’t know what else you can do, you need a better tactic. Maybe less directed at the non Jewish public developing anti semitism and more publically directed at the Jewish community in the form of …”Houston We Have A problem”.

zionists always trying to control the narrative … I wrote to the guy who put up the maps of Palestine shrinking on those posters in New York and urged him to just put up the iconic pictures next time (worth a 1000 words, right?) – the father trying to protect his son (later killed and area bulldozed to hide the evidence); Rachel Corrie’s murder by tank; the young female artist shot in the head with a tear-gas cannister who lost an eye; the American citizen Turkish kid murdered on the Mavi Marmara flotilla boat … and 100 others