Lebanon Photos: You Can Hardly Believe Your Eyes

MaozIsrael
Founded by Ari & Shira Sorko-Ram
September 2006
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Lebanon Photos: You Can
Hardly Believe Your Eyes
By Shira Sorko-Ram
A
t 8:00 a.m. Sunday morning, Lebanese authorities
received information that a building in Qana, housii
ing around 100 sleeping children and elderly, had just been
bombed and the building had collapsed.
The report stated that 56 were now buried in the rubble,
34 of them children. Horrible, tragic photographic images
were sent around the world of dead children and weeping
rescue workers.
The event, called the “Qana Massacre” was considered the
turning point in Israel’s relationship with international media when world public opinion began to sharply side with Lebanon
and even Hizbollah. However, inexplicable inconsistencies in
the story and the pictures of Qana immediately surfaced and
became so apparent that Israel’s top intel people were scratchii
ing their heads to explain for the unfolding events.
Here is what we know happened: In the preceding days,
were killed, putting a premature end to Israel’s attempt to
wipe out Hizbollah ten years ago. This current tragedy was
like a repeating nightmare out of the past.
However, this time, almost immediately there surfaced
many enigmas and inconsistencies that needed answers. The
Red Cross arrived and verified that there were 28 bodies, not
56 as reported earlier.
But most perplexing, it became apparent that although
the Israeli air force knew exactly what time the building had
been bombed (just after midnight,) it was only at 8:00 a.m.
that the building actually collapsed on the sleeping children,
according to local Lebanese sources.
Israel Defense Force’s Major General Gadi Eisnkot confi
firmed that the building had definitely not been bombed
again at 8:00 a.m.; he had no idea as to how the building
could have collapsed seven or eight hours after being initi
tially struck. Israel’s air force had photographic proof that
all bombs striking that area had reached their targets and
Reuters
Israel had dropped leaflets over Qana, warning citizens to
leave the town immediately as Israel would be bombing
that area with the goal of destroying the Hizbollah center
located there.
In fact, over the first two weeks of the war, 150 Hizbollah
rockets had been aimed at Israel’s cities from the town of
Qana, causing deaths and many horrible injuries.
Just after midnight on July 30, Israel’s air force struck a
building in Qana, which was targeted after Hizbollah rockei
ets were launched from that building or ones nearby.
When the report of Israel’s bombing of Qana reached
the media, a cry went up around the world at this atrocity.
Israel’s prime minister and the Israel Defence Forces immedi
diately apologized for the 56 dead, explaining that their intel
had told them this area was a Hizbollah center and that the
buildings were completely unoccupied.
Under the glaring spotlight of caustic journalists and the
world press, Brigadier General Amir Eshel, Head of the Air
Photographer Adnan Hajj used Photoshop software to
add additional decoy flares by cloning them from the
first. reuters “killed” the picture and fired the photogrr
rapher after bloggers pointed out the fake picture.
Force Headquarters, again explained to the world that 150
rockets from a very high number of launchers had been fired
by Hizbollah from the town of Qana and its surrounding
areas - plus a diverse range of activities from the command
center had been observed. That particular building had been
targeted because Hizbollah launchers had been driven in and
parked under the building.
But no apology was seemingly acceptable to the UN
and the world castigated Israel for her “war crimes against
humanity.” The U.S. backing for Israel to continue its war
campaign to wipe out Hizbollah weakened and the move to
pass a cease-fire resolution in the Security Council quickly
gathered steam.
What made this tragedy so agonizing is that in 1996, a
similar tragedy had happened when Israel hit a UN outpost
in the same village. The UN had not communicated with
Israel that there were Lebanese citizens taking shelter in the
outpost. Over 100 Lebanese, mostly women and children,
that particular building had not been targeted a second time
– although half a kilometer away, other Hizbollah centers
had been struck.
Eisnkot was genuinely mystified and offered the possibility
that Hizbollah, according to their practice, might have stored
explosives in the building that for some reason exploded the
next morning. Or, that the structure, having been weakened
by the earlier bombing, simply collapsed later.
However, Brent Sadler of CNN, upon arriving at the site,
shockingly reported that the Israeli bomb did not even hit
the building; and that the bomb had actually landed 20-30
meters from the structure.
In fact, the roof of the building was still intact. Journalist
Ben Wedeman of CNN noted that there was a large crati
ter next to the building, but he observed that the building
appeared not to have collapsed as a result of the Israeli bomb
strike. (www.israelinsider.com 31July06)
Next was the question of how there could have been 56
Israelis, one explanation would be that Hizbollah engini
neered a “controlled demolition” to fake an Israeli attack at
8:00 in the morning, placing the dead bodies of the children
in the rubble.
Israelinsider.com, a daily news magazine, remarked,
“There is no shortage of victims in Lebanon and
Israel these days. From this vantage point, at this
time, it looks like in the case of Qana, the world’s
media was duped in a cruel and colossal hoax by a
terror organization that knows no moral bounds in its
exploitation of suffering and anti-Israel hatred. But,
as usual, the only party expected to pay the full price
will be Israelis.” (www.israelinsider.com 31July06)
PHOTOS “ARTISTICALLY” ALTERED
Bloggers began to report that pictures coming out of
Lebanon seemed to have been doctored. Blogger Charles
Johnson, the same man who exposed the fact that Dan
Reuters
(or 28) sleeping people at 8:00 in the morning in a building
that had been bombed the night before. And if the Lebanese
had actually died during the midnight strike, why at only
8:00 a.m, after the building had collapsed, were the authoriti
ties notified?
When journalists asked why the Lebanese had not fled
after seeing Israel’s leaflets, local Lebanese said that the
roads were all closed so that people couldn’t get out.
However, it was noted by the media that car loads of photi
tographers coming in droves were able to get in and out of
the village with no trouble at all.
Once the journalists had arrived, rescue workers began
removing the bodies from one small opening in the collapsed
structure; and journalists were not allowed to go near area of
the collapsed building where the bodies were found. (ibid.)
Networks and photographers began to record the unfoldii
ing tragedy. Pictures of the event were featured in almost
every main newspaper in the world and all of the networks.
adnan hajj brushed in extra dark smoke
making the photo more dramatic
Again, Israel was labeled as the villain - the killer of childi
dren and the helpless.
Nevertheless, the mysteries and questions would not go
away. The Israeli media noted that the pictures of some of
the children in Qana on the TV and in the newspapers did
not look as if they had just died - but rather as if they had
been dead for days.
Even, CNN’s Wedeman noted the strange lack of blood
or even signs of clotting or dried blood on many of the
children. To him, they all appeared to have died while they
were sleeping. Sleeping? Apparently, through thunderous
Israeli air attacks?
Israelis began to wonder if Hizbollah had placed childi
dren already dead in the building and then drove a launcher
underneath, waiting for an Israeli bombing raid. Some of
the dead actually looked as if they had been exhumed from
the earth because of their color and state of decomposition.
When the building was not completely destroyed by the
Rather had used faked documents on CBS to report on
President George W. Bush’s national service, now claimed
to have discovered pictures photographed by one Adnan
Hajj, having been “touched up” by using Photoshop softwi
ware techniques.
The first and most famous doctored picture discovered is
one where Hajj paint-brushed in more smoke over Beirut to
make the city look more bombed than it was. Then, bloggi
gers found that Hajj had added two extra decoy flares trailing
an F-16, calling them rockets that Israel was using to bomb
Beirut. In the original picture, there was only one flare (and
some even doubt that there was one.) See www.littlegreenfootballs.
com/weblog
An embarrassed Reuters apologized and then as the furor
mounted, fired Mr. Adnan Hajj. They finally removed all
920 of his pictures off the Reuter archives.
But the bloggers were just getting started. In the pictures
taken of Qana on July 30, they begin to notice a certain fellow
12:45 pm
2
12:53 pm
AP
AP
1
Photographer: kevin frayer - ap
Photographer: kevin Frayer -AP
3
4
2:21 pm
AP
unknown
Photographer: unknown
Photographer: adnan hajj
4:09 PM
5
4:30 pm
AP
6
Photographer: kevin frayer - AP
7:22 am
8
10:26 am
Photographer: lefteris pitarakis - AP
AP
AP
7
Photographer: adnan hajj
Photographer: Mohammed Zaatari - AP
whom they named the “Green
Helmet Guy” who appears over
and over carrying various dead
children in his arms.
On the blog site, www.eurefei
erendum.blogspot.com, July 31,
2006, editors Helen Szamuely
and Richard North documented
to the best of their ability, the
sequence of staged shots of the
Qana deaths. A few examples:
1. At 12:45 p.m. July 30,
AP’s Kevin Frayer photographs
a child’s body in the hands of
a man who has become known
as the “Green Helmet Guy” and
who appears in many pictures
taken in Qana and elsewhere.
He is described by bloggers as
wearing glasses, “designer stubbi
ble” for a beard, blue tee-shirt,
jeans and an olive green militi
tary-style helmet and fluoresci
cent jacket. Note blue helmeted
UN soldiers who came to the
scene about this time according
to eureferendum.blogspot.com.
2. We find that eight minui
utes later, Kevin Frayer had
taken another picture of the
same child. This means that
“Green Helmet” is not just a
civil defense person digging up
bodies, but also taking time to
parade the bodies around before
the many photographers.
3. These are horrifying picti
tures, but for truth’s sake, we
must proceed. Here we see a
photo of this same child being
dug out of the dirt where he suppi
posedly died. Blogger eureferendi
dum.blogspot.com was not able
to identify the photographer nor
the time, nor could we find it in
Reuters or AP’s files. Note, the
blue pacifier is already visible on
the left side of the body.
4. Here we have a picture
of the same scene with a time
stamp and the photographer’s
name - none other than Adnan
Hajj, the man who faked the
two photos we spoke of. He is
the only photographer we have
competitive journalists to participate in the kind of (staging)
experience that is being described.” photographers working
for Polaris, The Times and Time, also claim that they saw no
staging whatsoever at Qana or anywhere else.
However, it happens that the German Zapp video
magazine released raw footage of NDR (Norddeutscher
Rundfunk) agency, of the “Green Helmet Guy” indisputai
ably staging photo ops for the press. He instructs workers
to put a body in an ambulance, then to take it out again. He
then brings the body on a stretcher towards the camera and
removes the body from one stretcher to the other for effect.
He then faces the camera and makes a motion with his hands
to continue shooting. (You must view the video http://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=4vPAkc5CLgc&eurl=http%3A%2F
%2Foutcut%2Eblogsp) Fox News recently aired the video.
Bloggers Szamuely and North call AP’s Kathleen Carroll
a liar and challenges her to prove him wrong, or to clean up
their agency.
Bryan Denton, an independent photographer stringer
currently in Lebanon, whose work has been used by the
New York Times, wrote in another blog that he himself had
witnessed Lebanese photographers “choreographing the
unearthing of bodies; directing emergency workers here and
there; asking them to position bodies just so; even removing
bodies that have already been put in graves; so that they can
photograph them in people’s arms…”
Denton continues, “I think that the onus is on the wire
services themselves because they act as the employer/filter
of their photographers’ photos. Standards of credibility
should be in place or else the rest of us [i.e. who do not fake
photos] end up paying the price. . . this has been something
I’ve noticed happening here, more than any other place I’ve
worked previously.” www.littlegreenfootballs.com.weblog Bryan
Denton Fri Aug 11 07:36:08 UTC 2006 Beirut, Lebanon.
reuters description:
women crying over her
destroyed house, July 22
AP
Reuters
been able to ascertain that was allowed into the place where
the child was “uncovered.”
5.& 6. At 4:09p.m., Mr. Frayer of AP is still taking picti
tures of “Green Helmet” parading around with the same
child. Twenty-one minutes later, Adnan Hajj (6) continues
the photo op. Obviously from these photos, one can see that
Mr. “Green Helmet” is a professional dead-baby presenter,
a Hizbullah propagandist. The Hajj photos were “killed” by
Reuters, but AP stood by theirs.
7. Here is a shot, timed at 7:21a.m. of a dead girl lying
in a ambulance. Note, this photo was taken by AP photogri
rapher Lefteris Pitarakis 39 minutes before the house colli
lapsed, supposedly killing the children.
8. Three hours later (10:25 a.m.) the child is again put
in the ambulance, photographed by Mohammed Zaatari of
AP. This time, “Green Helmet” has taken off his helmet and
fluorescent jacket.
Photo agencies responded that the time stamp does not
always represent the hour the picture is taken but when it is
received by the agency. Maybe that is the explanation for
the large spread of hours of photo-taking of the same childi
dren over and over again. Maybe.
Bloggers, hundreds of thousands of them, have begun
to examine the questionably staged pictures of Qana. In
so doing they found that “Green Helmet” appears in other
locations in Lebanon - almost always with a dead child. In
fact he was present in photos at the first bombing of Qana
ten years ago - holding dead children!
While Reuters took all of Adnan’s Hajj pictures out of their
archives, admitting some wrong doing, Kathleen Carroll,
senior vice president and executive editor for Associated
Press, denies any wrongdoing. She says she has personally
spoken with her photo editors and concludes, “I also know
from 30 years of experience in this business that you can’t get
ap description of same women in same clothing:
women crying over her house bombed on august 5.
did she have two houses?
FOUR WAYS TO CORRUPT NEWS COVERAGE
The most common methods being used to turn the world
against Israel are:
1. Digitally manipulating and changing the photogi
graphs that have been taken.
2. Photographing scenes actually staged by Hezbollah
and presenting the photos as if they were of authentic sponti
taneous news events.
3. Photographers themselves are staging scenes or
moving objects and presenting photos of the set-ups as if
they were naturally occurring (like placing a toy in the foregi
ground of a bombed house).
4. Giving false or misleading captions to otherwise
real photos that were taken at a different time or place.
Tim Rutten of the Los Angeles Times writes:
“[T]he obscenely anti-Israeli tenor of most of the
European and world press means there’s an eager
market for pictures of dead Lebanese babies.
“It’s worth noting in this context that there is no
similar flow [from Israel] of propagandistic images.
That’s because one side - the democratically elected
government of Israel, views death as a tragedy and
the other side, the Iranian-financed terrorist organizati
tion Hezbollah - sees it as an opportunity.
“In this case, turning their own dead children into
material creates an opportunity to cloud the fact that
every Lebanese casualty, tragic as he or she is, was
killed or injured as an unavoidable consequence of
Israel’s pursuit of terrorists who use their own people
as human shields. Every Israeli civilian killed or
injured was the victim of a terrorist attack intended
to harm civilians. That alone ought to wash away any
blood-stained suggestion of moral equivalency.
“That brings us to the most troubling of the
possible explanations for these fraudulent photos,
which is that some of the photojournalists involved
are either intimidated by or sympathetic to the
Hezbollah terrorists. It’s a possibility fraught with
harsh implications, but it needs to be examined thoroi
oughly and openly.” (Lebanon photos: Take a closer look,
August 12, 2006)
CONCLUSION
After spending hours looking at pictures and videos on
the internet of fraudulent or misleading photography, it is
clear to this writer that Hizbollah very likely concocted the
whole Qana story.
The world has bought into the anti-Israeli propaganda, has
helped stage it and has published the images around the world.
I also have no doubt that what has been exposed is only the
tip of the iceberg. Hizbollah has been able to create a culture
of deception and hoax; promoting the world’s perception that
Israel is the aggressor and the Muslims are the victims.
Islamic fascists, as President Bush calls them, will use
every single weapon of treachery and fraudulence imaginai
able. Indeed, every intent of the thoughts of their hearts is
evil continually.
This media and airwaves propaganda war is already movii
ing towards that prophetic time when all the nations of the
world will come against Jerusalem. Be alert to these sinister
tactics and pray for the peace of Jerusalem.
World
ws &
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U.S. News and World Report featured a Hizbbollah strongman on its front cover. The
terrorist is standing near what is claimed
to be a downed Israeli jet. A close-up of the
right side of the picture shows the smoke is
billowing from tires in a garbage dump.
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Notice the man on the right side with the green cap. He
is giving instructions to the workers clearing rubble.
The same man continues searching the rubble toggether with others.
This time the same man was found “dead” under the rubble. Notice his green cap tucked under his
left arm. After bloggers spotted the staged picture, The New York Times quickly changed the capttion, explaining the man was injured, instead of dead. Perhaps the pole fell on him? But, then why is
someone’s jacket hanging on the pole?
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Guy Di Yacov / Maoz Media
Children of Messianic
Jews who spent days
and nights in their
shelter: You see the
suffering in the childd
dren’s eyes.
While our soldiers fought Hizbollah
rockets our citizens waited in shelters
Gil Paz, director of Maoz Publishing,
served on the Lebanese front
Guy Di Yacov / Maoz Media
Thousands of Israeli homes
and businesses were damaged
or destroyed in Galilee by
Hezbollah terrorists. One and
a half million Israelis sat in
shelters for five weeks or fled
to central and south Israel.
Guy Di Yacov / Maoz Media
A team from our congregation risked the Katyusd
shas to minister to Israelis under fire in neighbd
borhood shelters. These children who are from
observant Jewish homes, wrote on their wall:
“The time of redemption is very near.” A picture
of their rabbi can be seen on the right wall.
Congregation Tiferet Yeshua
and the Nahariya Congregatt
tion worship together
Pastor Joseph Haddad fled Nahariya, and then
Haifa, with 40 of his Lebanese Arab congregatt
tion because of the heavy bombing in the north.
They worshiped together with our congregation
one Saturday morning during the war.
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Our two worship teams sang and
played together, while Jews and Arabs
danced in praise to the God of Israel.
WE HAVE THE ANSWER!
As we prayed for our members who are
serving in the Israel Defense Forces, Pastor
Joseph laid hands on two of our soldiers who
were present in the meeting.
Maoz Media
Guy Di Yacov / Maoz Media
“We kept looking at the eyes of the children in the shelters.
Especially when the rockets fell - every few minutes”. Congregation Tiferet Yeshua Team
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