The blogosphere is going crazy over pictures taken by AP photographer Sebastian Scheiner, which show little Israeli girls writing on missiles about to be launched across the border. Bloggers have been quick to say these pictures show that Israeli children are being taught to hate Arabs and compare the pictures to photos of the Hitler Youth in 1930's Germany.
It turns out the bloggers were too quick to draw conclusions, ignorant of, or ignoring, the context. Lisa Goldman puts things in perspective: those are girls from Kiryat Shmona, an Israeli border town, who came out of their shelters for the first time in days. Their parents are the ones who wrote messages on the missiles, none addressed to the Lebanese people but rather to Sheikh Hassan Nassrallah and the Hizbullah. The girls later added drawings of things like Israeli flags.
I think letting kids write on rockets is wrong for a lot of reasons. For one thing, I expect parents to keep their children as far away from live ammo as possible. But besides the safety issue, we shouldn't glorify weaponry in the eyes of little children.
Having said that, it is still a far cry from the hysterical "Zionist killing machine" reaction from bloggers. If any WWII analogy is appropriate here, it isn't the Hitler Youth one, but a hypothetical picture of British children signing bombs meant for Nazi air bases during the Blitzkrieg.
Tags: Israel, Hezbollah, Lebanon, Middle East
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3 weeks ago
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ReplyDeleteEmmanuel. My comment probably contributed to this on Gert's blog, the tone of which was somewhat crude and clumsy and which I regret. I sometimes end up making quick comments on different blogs in haste on a whole range of topics that afterwards I would like to have expressed better as Gert will attest to :)
ReplyDeleteAnyway, what got me, was that at a time when Israel (along with the US and UK) is increasingly under criticism (some of that justified, perhaps some of that over the top at times), and there is a real 'media war' of images going on, it seemed very strange to me that such a controversial image which would no doubt be used by people with a strongly 'anti Israel leaning' would appear at all.
J
none addressed to the Lebanese people but rather to Sheikh Hassan Nassrallah and the Hizbullah.
ReplyDeleteLast time I checked, they were Lebanese too, with a high degree of Lebanese support for their response to Israeli attacks.
They are regarded as terrorists by the US and Israel, but this is far from being universal
Last time I checked, they were Lebanese too, with a high degree of Lebanese support for their response to Israeli attacks.
ReplyDeleteThe children were addressing the Hizbullah specifically, not the entire Lebanese people as a whole. So, yes, they are Lebanese too, and may be supported by other Lebanese people, possibly the majority of them, but the kids didn't have all those other people in mind.