At NY Times, the Only Photo of Gaza Fighting that's Fit to Print

by Leo Rennert

On March 12, after three days of fighting between Israel and rocket-firing terrorists in Gaza, the New York Times had ample choices to run one or more pictures to illustrate these events.

The Times could have featured pictures of Islamic Jihad and Popular Resistance Committee terrorist launching some of the 150 rockets from amidst civilian areas in Gaza. Or pictures of the rockets flying in the direction of Ashdod, Beersheva, Ashkelon, or Yavne. Or pictures of frightened Israeli tots cowering with their parents in bomb shelters. Or funerals of the 16 Gaza rocket-firing terrorists killed by Israeli airstrikes. Or hundreds of truckloads of food supplies and other necessities still crossing from Israel into Gaza.

The Times, however, ignored all these obvious pictorial subjects and chose a quite different picture -- a four-column photo of a 12-year-old Gaza boy killed while playing outside in northern Gaza. The headline over the picture: "Gaza Fighting Continues, Claiming a Boy's Life." (full size image here)

Since this was the only picture in the March 12 edition, it gives exactly a false impression of the actual fighting -- i.e. that the salient point about the fighting involves civilian casualties in Gaza, when the opposite is true. In the first three days of the Gaza flare-up, Israeli airstrikes killed 16 Palestinian terrorists belonging to Islamic Jihad and the PRC. The only collateral casualties were the boy in the Times photo and a guard of an orchard.

Rarely in the annals of military combat has any army used as much caution and precision targeting as the IDF in its retaliatory airstrikes so as to minimize collateral civilian damage and casualties. And the IDF has managed to do this while Gaza rocket-firing terrorists are deeply embedded in heavily populated areas.

The Times, however, is so determined to stick it to Israel that it abandons all journalistic objectivity, proportionality and fairness.

Leo Rennert is a former White House correspondent and Washington bureau chief of McClatchy Newspapers.

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/03/at_ny_times_the_only_photo_of_gaza_fighting_thats_fit_to_print.html

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