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Friday, October 08, 2010

How a photograph lies

From The Daily Mail:
Dramatic images have emerged of the moment an Israeli motorist drove straight into a young Palestinian boy in East Jerusalem today.

The child had been part of a group throwing stones at Israeli cars following news the country's military had killed two Hamas militants in the West Bank city of Hebron earlier on Friday.
Amazingly the boy only sustained 'light injuries' after being thrown into the air by the vehicle and twisting over its roof.
Looks pretty bad, right? An Israeli heartlessly running his vehicle into a young boy?

Now watch the video:



The boy was running towards the car even during the impact. The car honked the horn to get him out of the way. Clearly the driver was worried about his safety and didn't want to stop, and for good reason - we see his back windshield smashed by the innocent, youthful rocks being thrown.

And there are a whole bunch of photographers there, whose presence makes the kids want to act with bravado and who might have actually been goading them into throwing rocks.

Notice that while the Daily Mail published a series of photos from the incident, it didn't bother to show the smashed rear windshield of the car.

The driver was David Be'eri, who has been trying to calm down the tension in Silwan, seen in this video.

(h/t Brian of London and Orna)

More here.