Seems fair to me
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Photographers who joined the Oct. 7 pogrom deserve censure, not awards
The prestigious honor given to the photo of Hamas terrorists showing off the half-naked body of their young Jewish victim is evidence of the corruption of contemporary journalism.
By JONATHAN S. TOBIN
What is the obligation of a reporter or news photographer covering an act of terrorism or warfare? Is it merely to document what has happened? Or are there some limits on what a journalist should do to get a story or an image? How does a working journalist balance the public’s right to know and the need to document moments that may well be considered part of the first draft of history—as writers self-importantly like to refer to their work—against other considerations? The line between being the proverbial fly on a wall observing events in which the reporter/photographer is not an actor and active participation in them can be razor-thin at times. And there are plenty of times when that line isn’t easy to discern.
But in the case of the freelance photographers in Gaza who went along for the ride with Hamas on Oct. 7, the notion that the product of their day’s work should be viewed as simply normal reportage is a perversion of any notion of honest or ethical journalism.
The potential complicity of both those photographers and the mainstream outlets such as Reuters, The New York Times and the Associated Press that ran their pictures of the atrocities committed by the Palestinians was the subject of a firestorm of protest after Honest Reporting’s report on the subject was published.
Riding along with the murderers
Those publications denied that they had any prior knowledge of the Hamas attacks, as did the photographers. They claimed that they merely followed the crowd of terrorists and ordinary Palestinians who crossed the border to take part in an orgy of murder, rape, torture, kidnapping and wanton destruction in the 22 Jewish communities that were attacked that day before Israeli forces began their counterattack.
But the issue has returned to the news with the announcement that the University of Missouri’s Reynolds Journalism has given its prestigious “Photo of the Year” to the image taken by Ali Mahmud. In it, some Hamas terrorists are shown sitting in the back of a pickup truck brandishing weapons and showing off the half-naked body of 22-year-old Shani Louk, a German-Israeli artist who was attending the Nova music festival that was attacked by a horde of heavily armed Palestinians.
It’s not known for sure whether Louk was still alive when the photo was taken. Initially, there were reports that she was seen, albeit in grave condition, inside Gaza. But Israeli forces subsequently found a bone from the base of her skull on a road leading out of the festival grounds, which means that she has officially been declared dead. But whether she was dead or dying, the photo depicts the terrorists displaying her body as a trophy during their triumphant return to Gaza amid the cheers of Palestinians who then, and now, according to multiple surveys, supported the atrocities of Oct 7.
To add further insult to injury, the caption on the award—itself a biased document that underestimates the number of Israelis kidnapped and accepts the widely exaggerated and bogus Hamas statistics about Palestinian casualties—doesn’t even mention Louk. To the AP, the University of Missouri and the Reynolds Institute, she was merely a prop to be displayed by her murderers, not even worthy of being named.
The award has renewed the torrent of outreach from Israelis, Jews and anyone with a shred of decency about the conduct of these specific photographers and the use of their work by respected news outlets.
Deserving of contempt
As English historian Simon Sebag Montefiore wrote on X, the award seems like “a sinister and creepy joke.” As he further noted, the AP deserves our contempt “for using the product of a ghoul who rode with terrorists and rapists as they slaughtered women and children, and then stopped to pose and snap this vision of heartless, diabolic triumph: the killers and abusers of an innocent girl pose with her naked broken body as a trophy.” That this outrage should be honored suggests, he said, that the awarding bodies “have deep fissures of emptiness where their morality, humanity and indeed taste should be.”
What the AP, which happily accepted the award, and those who gave it to them are doing is “celebrating the posing of a picture snapped between the capture, rape and killing then gleeful parading of the naked body of an innocent girl in the middle of a process of unspeakable mutilation and mockery, the very photographing itself an act of indefensible abuse and atrocious inhumanity. Not to speak of an appalling corruption of the ethics of journalism.”
Not everyone is angered by it.
Louk’s father, Nissim Louk, has been quoted as saying he was pleased by the award because it preserves a moment that should be remembered, albeit with infamy, and is therefore one of the most important photos of the last 50 years. While he has a point about the importance of what happened on Oct. 7, I think he fails to grasp that the award is being given not so much to a brilliant example of photographic composition but to the photographer for being there even though no decent person should have been in a position to take it. Rather than a memorialization of depravity, it is a celebration of it.
Ron Kampeas, the Washington Bureau Chief of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, also defended the award, writing that “reporters and photographers who take risks to expose atrocities deserve recognition … because they take risks to expose atrocities. Because we should have evidence of atrocities. I don’t get how anyone who has anything to do with reporting does not get this.”
Perhaps in the current culture of journalism, many who work in the liberal corporate press agree with Kampeas. But his comment doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Those who joined in the orgy of atrocities on Oct. 7 were not taking risks. At best, and if you accept their claim that they had no foreknowledge of what would happen that day, they were merely joining a bloodthirsty mob carrying out pogroms. And given that those carrying out these crimes were themselves taking photos and videos with Go-Pro cameras given to them by Hamas, the notion that we needed these photos to provide evidence of these events is risible. If anything, the photographers were seeking to celebrate these crimes in much the same manner that many Nazis took pictures of Jewish men, women and children they murdered during the Holocaust.
Ethical violations
This doesn’t merely normalize that which shouldn’t be normalized. It is, as Montefiore wrote, a violation of the ethics of journalism. Indeed, the conduct of the photographers that went along with Hamas violated numerous provisions in the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics.
Under the category of “Do No Harm,” these photos transgressed rules that require journalists to treat their subjects as “human beings deserving of respect.” No such respect was shown to Louk. That’s especially true when you consider that she was likely the victim, as the photographers must have known since they were there, of sex crimes, which the SPJ code states must be treated with “heightened sensitivity.” It also demands that photographers “avoid pandering to lurid curiosity,” which is the least one can say about taking and then publishing the photo of a half-naked victim—without her permission or that of her family—of both a terrorist attack and rape.
Another key violation is the section in the code about acting independently. In Hamas-run Gaza, there were no independent journalists. As has been frequently documented, all the freelancers in Gaza used by mainstream outlets were, in one way or another, in thrall to the terrorist movement that tyrannically ran the Strip as an independent Palestinian state in all but name. Everything that they wrote or photographed was only what Hamas wanted the world to know about.
Any of these faux journalists who accompanied the Hamas pogroms were already compromised, and their role on that day—in which many of them were shown to be celebrating with the terrorists—merely confirms that they were part of the crime, not independent journalists documenting it. They were as complicit in these atrocities as anyone who joined any other band of criminals to take pictures of their barbaric actions.
But the problem here isn’t just the lack of ethics on the part of the AP and others who employed Mahmud and a number of photographers who joined the terrorist attack or even an undeserved award. It speaks to the moral corruption that is so prevalent in the culture of contemporary journalism.
Forfeiting our trust
Only in an era in which many, if not most, of those who work in journalism consider it to be a form of political activism, rather than a search for the truth, could something like the disgusting image of Louk be considered worthy of being honored as the photo of the year.
Only in a journalism environment in which Israelis are routinely delegitimized and slandered by woke ideologues because they are falsely branded as “white oppressors” or “settler/colonialists” in a country where only Jews are the indigenous people could someone who was part of the Oct. 7 terror attacks be given a major award.
Only in a time when critical race theory and intersectionality have conquered the major institutions of journalism could the murder and rape of Jews be glamorized in this fashion and then rewarded with acclaim.
Only in a moment in history where antisemitism has not just surged but been mainstreamed by the gatekeepers of journalism could the image of the degradation of a Jewish woman by terrorists be considered not just acceptable but an example of outstanding work.
The decision of the Reynolds Institute is consistent with the way much of the press has become the stenographers of Hamas and their fellow travelers on the American left. It is just one more signal to the public that the liberal press doesn’t only merit our distrust but also our disgust at their vile complicity in mass murder.
++++
GOP resignations could result in the Republican Party returning to it's conservative roots so that voters finally have a choice. It would not be healthy, however, if both parties offered fringe choices. Let Democrats offer squishy CRT and DEI nonsense and hopefully the GOP will elect candidates who start balancing budgets, funding our defense needs and acting morally rational. Tall order but "hope springs eternal."
+++
Check out this Article from AmericanThinker https://www.americanthinker.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Israel and the Democrats
RFK Jr. and John Fetterman buck the party by standing up for the Jewish state.
By William McGurn
Ever since President Harry S. Truman became the first world leader to recognize Israel in 1948, supporters of the Jewish state have considered the Democratic Party their political home. But the war in Gaza is laying bare a rift over Israel’s standing in modern American liberalism.
Each is a man of the left, which has become increasingly hostile to Israel. Pressure from the left has led both President Biden and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) to temper support for Israel with unprecedented public criticism of the country’s elected government and its war effort. The criticisms are striking because they come on the eve of an offensive in Rafah that Israel deems essential to root out the Hamas leadership and destroy its ability to inflict another attack like Oct. 7.
Messrs. Fetterman and Kennedy might have been expected to succumb to progressive pressure. But they didn’t. The question for a post-Joe Lieberman Democratic Party is whether the Fetterman-Kennedy resistance marks a restoration of support for Israel to its place in American liberalism—or a dying last gasp.
Following the Oct. 7 attacks, Mr. Fetterman dismissed the near mystical faith among progressives that a cease-fire is the solution in Gaza. “We can talk about a cease-fire after Hamas is neutralized,” he tweeted. He’s also signaling that pressure on him to bend—demonstrations outside his office, an open letter from former campaign workers, the resignation of staffers—won’t work.
And he keeps speaking. When Vice President Kamala Harris said that the planned Israel Defense Forces assault on Rafah would be a “huge mistake,” Mr. Fetterman pushed back.
“Hard disagree,” he tweeted. “Israel has the right to prosecute Hamas to surrender or to be eliminated. Hamas owns every innocent death for their cowardice hiding behind Palestinian lives.”
Mr. Fetterman hasn’t paid a political price for his stand. Yes, those former campaign staffers accuse him in their letter of a “gutting betrayal.” But a Quinnipiac poll from January showed 26% of Pennsylvania voters saying they have a more favorable view of Mr. Fetterman because of his position on Israel—against 14% who have a less favorable view. What the Fetterman polling also suggests is that voters respect a politician who doesn’t fold in the face of loud protest.
Mr. Kennedy is in a somewhat different position. His support for Israel has also been clear and unequivocal, though these views haven’t attracted nearly the same attention as his stance on Covid vaccines. Like Mr. Fetterman, Mr. Kennedy hasn’t backed off an inch.
In a recent interview with Reuters, Mr. Kennedy expanded on his views. He says he saw no need for a cease-fire, the No. 1 demand of those at odds with the Jewish state. “Israel was in a cease-fire on Oct. 7, so what would be different this time? I think Israel understands that for everybody to progress, Hamas has to be destroyed.”
But in contrast to Mr. Fetterman, Mr. Kennedy may not benefit from this split with progressives. His appeal skews to the young and passionate, and anti-Biden protesters such as those carrying “Genocide Joe” signs would appear ripe for the picking. But in a recent piece for New York magazine, Ed Kilgore writes that Mr. Kennedy’s unvarnished support for Israel is “a huge obstacle” to any hopes he might “become 2024’s pied piper of progressive youth, much as his dad became 56 years ago.”
It’s telling that the Fetterman/Kennedy position today makes them political gadflies. A generation ago, they would have been mainstream liberals firmly in the Democratic orbit. Then again, Lieberman lost his last Democratic primary to a candidate who ran to his left on foreign policy, and he died promoting the centrist No Labels party.
Like Mr. Fetterman, Mr. Kennedy says he doesn’t care if his position costs him votes because taking it is the right thing to do. And like Mr. Fetterman’s friends, those who know RFK Jr. say no one should be surprised.
“What is so shocking about a decent and principled man siding with a democratic state that respects human rights and is defending itself against Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist group that just massacred and raped 1,200 mostly Jewish Israelis and kidnapped 250 more, while promising to commit this inhuman horror again and again?” asks Morton Klein, a friend of Mr. Kennedy and president of the Zionist Organization of America.
“What is shocking is that Joe Biden is aiding the Hamas terrorists by attempting to reward them with a Palestinian state and demanding a cease-fire against Israel’s wishes, enabling Hamas to regroup and rearm.”
+++++++++++++++++++
Schumer the epitome of a rotten egg.
What Chuck Schumer Has Wrought
Seth Mandel
Congratulations to Chuck Schumer, this year’s true April Fool. The predictably vile consequences of his public attacks on Israeli democracy are here, and no doubt there will be more coming.
Schumer has long fashioned himself the shomer—Hebrew for “watchman,” a play on his last name—of Israel. But he has revealed himself instead to be more of a mashgiach, the man who officially certifies products as kosher. And he has been certifying the political version of porkchops and pepperoni.
“I’m 100% with Senator Schumer,” declared Jamaal Bowman, the Squad-adjacent Democrat who has built his brand around anti-Jewish incitement. “[Benjamin Netanyahu] needs to be removed. He is a blockade to a pathway to peace. And we need a ceasefire right now. That’s what we should be focused on, humanitarian aid, not weapons.”
Appearing on MSNBC yesterday, Bowman had more to say: “The majority of Gaza has already been destroyed through acts of collective punishment by this maniac, Benjamin Netanyahu.”
Bowman was last seen yelling on a New York street corner that Israeli women were lying about the rapes committed by Hamas terrorists. Previously, he had been cited after he was caught on camera pulling a fire alarm to prevent a congressional floor vote. So it’s possible that Bowman uses the term “maniac” as a compliment, that it’s his way of trying to find common ground with the Israeli prime minister.
There were even worse things said by people in Congress yesterday, more evidence that Schumer has helped to open the floodgates of Jew-baiting when he called for regime change in an allied country.
Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon posted yesterday: “On this Easter, let’s ponder Netanyahu’s indiscriminate bombing of Gaza, which has killed more than 20,000 women and children, and his restriction of humanitarian aid, which has pushed Palestinians to the brink of famine.”
There is a long tradition of using Christian holy days like Easter to scapegoat the Jews for the world’s misfortunes. The Kishinev pogrom of 1903, the most infamous of its kind and the closest relation to Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre, began stirring on Easter. Warsaw was the site of an Easter pogrom in 1940—presumably folks remember what happened next.
There are other examples, but the point is clear. And that point is: Jeff Merkley’s presence in the United States Senate is a stain on this great country. But it’s also important to note why Merkley’s Easter passion play didn’t garner the kind of outrage it surely deserved: because Schumer has helped normalize and legitimize trashing Netanyahu as the villain and then arguing, with a straight face, that it isn’t meant to tar the Jewish state.
Now, we’ve been down this road a few times, but again: The Israeli counteroffensive in Gaza isn’t “Bibi’s war,” it’s Israel’s war. Netanyahu is the prime minister, but he is currently part of a three-man governing team atop a unity coalition. That team (and coalition) includes his primary rival, Benny Gantz, and a defense minister with whom Netanyahu had previously fallen out, Yoav Gallant, neither of whom would take this war in a different direction. They are in fact directing, under Netanyahu’s political authority, this war already.
It is also worth restating the current predicament in which all of Israel finds itself. After Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks, tens of thousands of residents of Israeli communities in that area were evacuated to other parts of the country, many of them to the south. The Iranian-directed missile attacks by Hezbollah since October have forced the evacuation of communities in the north, internally displacing another 60,000 Israelis. Yesterday, an Iranian proxy in Iraq managed to hit southern Israeli territory with a drone attack.
That is, this war alone has forced the displacement of about one percent of Israel’s population. Three times that many have been called up on reserve duty. The governing coalition now represents voters of the two largest political parties in the country and the two men between whom the next premiership will be fought. What would Jeff Merkley have them all do? Pretend, as he does, that this is some sort of imaginary war cooked up by one man?
The Jamaal Bowmans and Jeff Merkleys of the world are bothered by the fact that survival is popular with the Israeli public. And Chuck Schumer has given all such demagogues the green light to continue preaching against the legitimacy of the Jewish state.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Emery Travels
+++
Chapter 7 Kolkata
At the beginning of the cruise, we drove through Kolkata to get to the boat. We saw very little, but what we saw was pretty awful.
When we left Chandannagar on March 28, the boat sailed back to Kolkata. The morning of the 29 th , we left the boat at 8:00 a.m. for a 4-hour tour of Kolkata.
Our first stop was Mother Teresa’s home. This was not a stop I was very excited about. All I knew about her was that she worked among the very poorest of the poor in Kolkata. We learned a bit more about her at her home convent museum. As you know, she won
the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. Here is part of her biography from the Nobel Prize website:
Mother Teresa was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in Uskup, Ottoman Empire(now Skopje, North Macedonia), on August 26, 1910. Her family was of Albanian descent. At the age of twelve, she felt strongly the call of God. She knew she had to be a missionary to spread the love of Christ. At the age of eighteen she left her parental home in Skopje and joined the Sisters of Loreto, an Irish community of nuns with missions in India. After a few months’ training
in Dublin she was sent to India, where on May 24, 1931, she took her initial vows as a nun. From 1931 to 1948 Mother Teresa taught at St. Mary’s High School in Calcutta, but the suffering and poverty she glimpsed outside the convent walls made such a deep impression on her that in 1948 she received permission from her superiors to leave the convent school and devote herself to working among the poorest of the poor in the slums of Calcutta.
Although she had no funds, she depended on Divine Providence, and started an open-air school for slum children. Soon she was joined by voluntary helpers, and financial support was also forthcoming. This made it possible for her to extend the scope of her work.
On October 7, 1950, Mother Teresa received permission from the Holy See to start her own order, “The Missionaries of Charity”, whose primary task was to love and care for those persons nobody was prepared to look after.
In 1965 the Society became an International Religious Family by a decree of Pope Paul VI. The Society of Missionaries has spread all over the world, including the former Soviet Union and Eastern European countries. They provide effective help to the poorest of the poor in a number of countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and they undertake relief work in the wake of natural catastrophes
such as floods, epidemics, and famine, and for refugees.
The order also has houses in North America, Europe and Australia, where they take care of the shut-ins, alcoholics, homeless, and AIDS sufferers…
Mother Teresa’s work has been recognized and acclaimed throughout the world and she has received a number of awards and distinctions, including the Pope John XXIII Peace Prize (1971) and the Nehru Prize for her promotion of international peace and understanding (1972). She also received the Balzan Prize (1979) and the Templeton and Magsaysay awards.
I left her home with a lot more understanding and appreciation of her work and her spirit, and a feeling of peace and gratitude for her work. Her grave is here, in a large room where mourners pour in daily to pray over her or to touch her tomb. There is also a museum filled with stories of her life and all the awards she won. She and those who carry on her work are doing God’s work, no matter which
God or gods you recognize.
We drove through the Colonial part of Kolkata. Most of the buildings built by the British were red brick. When the British left, many of these buildings were just deserted and have been allowed to disintegrate. (Couldn’t they have put a lot of homeless people in
those buildings?) We saw a lot of Art Deco buildings, but, unlike the colorful sections of Miami, that are full of Art Deco designs, these remain grey and dilapidated. Our guide didn’t even point them out. So sad.
There are homeless living under every bridge and on every plot of dirt that isn’t filled with something else. Little kids run around barefoot in these encampments, stepping on who-knows-what. Stray dogs sleep nearby, hoping for a scrap of food to fall their way.
Speaking of dogs, I think I’ve seen one dog on a leash on this entire trip. The dogs are seemingly all strays, and they have the remarkable ability to sleep anywhere. You see them on every sidewalk, where people stop around them, and near shops. Some of the especially brave or stupid ones sleep on a median or even in the street.
In Kolkata, we also saw a lot of goats, although these tended to be in groups and have a goatherder watching them. Of course, cows go wherever they like, blocking traffic with an “I’m a cow and I’ll do whatever I like” attitude. One of our guides along the way told us that women will feed their children and then a cow. They are honored (not sacred) as a source of life because of their milk. (McDonald’s sells chicken, soy, and lamb burgers, but no beef. ) Once a cow has passed her ability to be useful, they just turn her loose on her own to forage in trash piles for food. There aren’t a lot of chubby ones – most are showing a lot of bone.
We stopped to see the Kolkata Flower Market. This is a wholesale market. No sedate little Eliza Doolittle's here. We saw it first from a bridge, looking down into the area. That would have been enough for me, but No! We had to go down and get in the chaos ourselves. Jim was loving taking photos here, while I was just trying to stay upright and not get pushed over. Hundreds of flower vendors were here, and their customers were small flower shop owners, restaurants, hotels, and marigold stringers.
What, you may ask, is a marigold stringer? That is a person makes leis of marigolds, or long decorative lines of marigolds to hang in your home. India must go through a million or more
marigolds a day. You see them everywhere. Bodies waiting to be cremated are covered with them. Most of the hotels gave us leis of marigolds when we arrived. They only last a day one strung, so the trash is full of them and cows seem to like them, so everyone is happy.
We made a quick stop at the beautiful and elegant Victoria Memorial. Just long enough to take a photos. Inquiring minds wanted to know more, so here is the info on this memorial from Encl. Britannica:
Victoria Memorial, a majestic white marble edifice situated in the middle of 64 acres of sprawling gardens, dominating the centre of Kolkata, India. Architecturally, it seems to reflect contemporary British civic classicism, but there are deliberate Eastern references as well.
The Victoria Memorial was conceived by Lord Curzon as a fitting monument to Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom following her death in 1901. He organized funding for the project from within India and commissioned William Emerson, one of the leading British architects of the day, to design the edifice for the centre of the city that was then the capital of British India. The prince of Wales (later King George V) laid the cornerstone on January 4, 1906, and, after
lengthy construction work, the building was formally opened on December 28,1921.
The marble used to construct the building comes from the same Makrana quarries in Rajasthan that were used for the construction of the Taj Mahal, and the corner domes are faintly Mughal in style. The whole composition is crowned by a bronze statue of the Angel of Victory that stands 16 feet (4.9 m) high; though not a true weather vane, it rotates when the wind is strong enough. The sides of the memorial are linked by open colonnades and in the south
entrance, approached through a triumphal archway commemorating King Edward VII, there is a statue of Lord Curzon himself. The entrance hall contains bronze busts and marble statues of royal
figures, and the walls are decorated with murals showing scenes from Queen Victoria’s life and texts from her imperial proclamations. The interior rooms display important collections of paintings, sculpture, artifacts, books, and manuscripts, all relating to royalty and empire.
Of course, we couldn’t see any of this from the bus out front. All we saw was the building in the distance and a bunch of "chotchke" sellers by the bus.
Following this not-very-extensive tour, we returned to the boat. One note about the photos. Many of them were taken from the bus as it was moving along. Sorry about the blurry ones.
https://www.mmemery.com/Kolkata
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The NYT's has begun it's 2 initial Satanic Attacks on Trump. The first was sent to me by a dear liberal friend and was all about how China was enthused about Trump winning and what they were doing to help him
I have attached a link to the second article.
Let the good times roll off the NYT's Press.
+++
 April 2, 2024 |
Donald Trump is aiming to transform the Republican Party into a kind of Church of Trump, with an insistence on absolute devotion and fealty. His ability to turn supporters’ passion into piety is a key to understanding his political success.
|
++++++++++++++++
No comments:
Post a Comment