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Thursday, January 13, 2011

When a photo caption lies

From Daylife:
A Star of David and the name of the Israeli settlement of Shilo written in Hebrew are seen on a Palestinian farmer field vandalized by Israel settlers on January 12, 2011in the northern West Bank village of Qariot, near Nablus. (Getty Images)
Horrible Jewish settlers defacing a Palestinian Arab field - and rubbing the owner's nose with it, by placing a Star of David there. How heartless! (The words say "Shiloh Land.")

However, Yisroel Medad - who lives in Shiloh - fills in the details:

Well, I happen to know something of this incident.  In fact, I blogged about the background which was a legal dispute with illegal intervention, leading to Arab violence against Jews perceived to be desirable due to the presence of Rabbi Arik Ascherman of Rabbis for Human Rights.  And read his comments at a later post on another but similar issue: land disputes.

They lost the court case but Ascherman never reported that.
The judge decided that the land was legally the property of Moshe Moskowitz of Shiloh and he could plough it and farm it  at will.  You can see Shiloh marked in the lower right-hand corner.  Qaryut is in the top right-hand corner.  The pink-colored land is below Qaryut and Shiloh and lies much lower than either village.  The road that can be discerned as the left-hand boundary of the property is Highway 60, from Jerusalem north.  Our main road.
It was done at night as a celebration of their legal victory
Read the whole thing.

So don't be so quick to believe captions!