The Guardian has a problem with photographs

This is a guest post by AKUS

We recently had the debacle of the Guardian using a pre-disengagement picture from Gaza in 2005 to illustrate a heavily mocked article by Leila El-Haddad.

The choice of an out-of-date, misrepresentative picture reflects the knee jerk and ignorant beliefs about what is really going on in Gaza at the wonderful world of the Guardian. The Guardian had to remove the photograph (a rare admission of an error).

This is what they should have used:

Gaza water park

The photograph below was used on the thoroughly discredited Daphna Baram column which tried to frighten the faithful into believing that the Israeli citizens’ right to free speech was in danger – Katherine Viner’s troops sprang into action, and in the interests of protecting Israelis’ right to free speech, dug up this photo of an Arab woman asking that … well Israeli freedoms be curtailed. Notice the utterly irrelevant, but typical GWV caption:


This appears to be its favorite at the moment – the same photograph resurfaced at the head of the article about the Lebanese women’s “flotilla” by a new face in the Guardian’s  Israel-bashing brigade, Ruth Sherlock  (Note to Sherlock:  flo·til·la  – a. A small fleet.b. A fleet of small craft – not one ship). This time, the faithful are to be reminded of the demand to boycott Israel in support of an ostensibly peaceful mission by “[an]Arabic singer [and] crew of nuns, doctors, lawyers and journalists “.  This variegated “crew” will try to bring aid to Gaza that is both unnecessary and, if Hamas’ refusal to receive the supplies from the Mavi Marmara is any indication, unwanted.

Rather than recycling the same picture they should use the picture below.  It is so much more representative of the type of person who sets sail on a ship bringing unneeded supplies that are past their sell-by date to Gaza. I’ve added a copy of the Hezbollah flag to make sure that they receive recognition for their support of this mission:

This is much more representative of the sort of person who worries about free speech in Israel and the suffering of Gazans at the mall and pools or waiting for their UNRWA handouts.

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