Israel and Gaza: A picture is worth a thousand misconceptions

A picture is worth a thousand misconceptions — at least where the conflict in Gaza is concerned. In the war behind the war, the sweeping campaign of anti-Israel disinformation, Palestinian sympathizers are working overtime in the media to warp and shift public opinion about what’s actually happening. So far, it’s worked. World leaders, all-too eager to make the Jewish state the bully, have latched onto the heart-wrenching images of starving, pained, or wounded women and children. But how much of it is real? An investigation from two German newspapers insists: not much.

Turns out, the shot from a camera can inflict as much damage as the shot from a gun. Carefully manipulated images have become a cottage industry in the last two years of the Israel-Hamas war, dangerously turning global sentiment against the victim of the gruesome terrorist attack of 2023. And one activist photographer seems to be making an outsized contribution to the number of controversial pictures, German newspapers Süddeutsche Zeitungand BILD warn.

Anas Zayed Fteiah, whose images are routinely picked up by major U.S. and international outlets, is being accused of staging photos to evoke sympathy for the Palestinians. In one of the most egregious examples, Fteiah’s emotional depiction of a group of pleading women, desperately holding out empty bowls where food should be, was splashed across Time Magazine’s August 1 cover with the headline, “The Gaza Tragedy.”

The reality, other reporters on the ground revealed, is vastly different. Photos from the same location showed lines of men “calmly receiving food” in the hours when distribution was regularly scheduled. The Süddeutsche Zeitung article blasted the lack of journalistic integrity that makes it difficult to draw reasonable conclusions about the war, noting that “at least some of the images were presented in a false or misleading context.”

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