Human Interest - War, children, and bad photojournalism

What are these pictures about?   The popular story on the internet for these pictures was that they depicted Israeli children signing bombs that were going to be dropped on Lebanon.  There was outrage, especially among the Arab community, that these pictures were displaying how evil Israel was and how Israeli children were being taught to hate.  

http://sabbah.biz/mt/archives/2006/07/17/photo-of-the-day-israeli-kids-sends-gifts-of-love-to-arab-kids/

Of course, I do not believe most of what I read on the internet, so after much searching (because unfortunately the above view was the prevalent one on the web), I found the following story that explains that the actual target of these messages was solely and specifically Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah.  Nasrallah was also the man responsible for the bombs falling on Kiryat Shmona, the town where these children are from, and where the pictures were taken.  

The story goes like this:  The time, July 2006, the place, Kiryat Shmona, a small Israeli village that adjoins the Lebanese border and has a history of being a target of Hezzbollah shelling.  The Israeli army is in the processes of fighting the Hezzbollah forces in southern Lebanon, and Kiryat Shmona had been under constant bombardment from the Hezzbollah forces in southern Lebanon since the first day of the conflict.

On the day that photo was taken, the girls had emerged from the underground bomb shelters for the first time in five days. A new army unit had just arrived in the town and was preparing to shell the area across the border. The unit attracted the attention of twelve photojournalists - Israeli and foreign. The girls and their families gathered around to check out the big attraction in the small town - foreigners. Apparently one or some of the parents wrote messages in Hebrew and English on the tank shells to Nasrallah. "To Nasrallah with love," they wrote to the man whose name was for them a devilish image on television - the man who mockingly told Israelis, via speeches that were broadcast on Al Manar and Israeli television, that Hezbollah was preparing to launch even more missiles at them. That he was happy they were suffering.

The photograpers gathered around.  The parents handed the markers to the kids and they drew little Israeli flags on the shells. Photographers look for striking images, and what is more striking than pretty, innocent little girls contrasted with the ugliness of war? The camera shutters clicked away, and I guess those kids must have felt like stars, especially since the diversion came after they'd been alternately bored and terrified as they waited out the shelling in their bomb shelters.

I am not a firm supporter of Israel, there are alot of involved issues that I have not quite sorted out.  But wasn't this is a terrible example of how the media and the internet perverts things. 

Dennis Dunleavy -- a visual theorist and critic had this to say about these pictures: (http://ddunleavy.typepad.com/the_big_picture/2006/07/photojournalism.html) 

...  many photojournalists forget about how the event is “staged” for the camera before hand. Many photojournalists, myself included, tend to get caught up with “getting the picture” and do not generally indulge in evaluating the moral complexities or consequences of a particular event unfolding before them and for them...   The picture is a photo-op.  Obviously, the media, in this case, did not appear to be all that concernedwith the implications of how others might react to seeing the children writing on bombs. After all, this is not how the media operates. Despite the heavy burden of reporting truthfully, photojournalism, or craft and art of making images appear as news, has always been a very effective way for governments, armies, groups, or individuals to get a “hot button” topic out to the public.

This is so sad because these pictures pervert the fact that Israel has nothing against the people of Lebanon; their issue is with the Hezzbollah.   The Israeli government took the controversial military action last July against the Hezbollah because the Lebanonese government and the UN was ineffective at stopping the Hezzbollah attacks.  When Israeli solders or citizens were kidnapped and killed by Hezbollah; UN soldiers just watched and did nothing.

Unfortunately, professional armies are always forced to play by different rules then the terrorists -- we see this with our own American forces in Iraq.  Before Israel bombs an area, Israeli airplanes throw thousands of papers, warning the civilians to leave so they will not get hurt.   When Hezbollah terrorist directs missiles to Israeli cities, the civilian population gets no warning.   Each Hezbollah shelling, which does not cause death or injury, is pure luck on Israel side.   The same missile could hit a school and cause death to children.

I guess the point that I want to make is that I have personally found that that the masses are too easily influenced by careless reporting.  All you have to do is read the assertions made on some of the terrible chain email that gets passed around, read some of the popular blogs that are written, or even read the comments here on Gather that are posted.  I can only hope that the majority of the Gather community will be vigilant and constantly scrutinize what they read and hear when it comes to issues as complicated as world affairs. 

This is the question that I pose on the Gather community:  Was this bad photojournalism?  If so, how can it be prevented?  Was the Arab community right in being upset about these pictures?   

References:

http://bagnewsnotes.typepad.com/bagnews/2006/07/bloodthirsty_ch.html

http://ddunleavy.typepad.com/the_big_picture/2006/07/photojournalism.html

http://ontheface.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2006/7/20/2142505.html

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/news/archives/2006/07/20/lies_damn_lies_and_war_pictures.html#more