I received an email today, obviously part of an orchestrated PR campaign to counter the bad press Israel has been getting of late, with the subject line, “Photos of Israel that will never make the news”. Here’s a sample:
The others similarly portrayed Israeli soldiers in sympathetic light: helping an old Arab[1] man across the street, huddling together in prayer[2], playing marbles in the dust with a child.
All very sweet. And all very beside the point.
No doubt a partisan of Hamas, or Hezbollah, or al-Qaeda could find a photo of one of their fighters stroking a kitten. And, no doubt the partisans of Israel would decry that photo as outrageous propaganda. And they’d be right.
However kind and humane these Israeli soldiers may be — and I personally don’t doubt that Israeli soldiers are, on average, just as kind and humane as anyone else — it doesn’t make up for the brutal and inhumane acts of the Israeli military. It isn’t a matter of balance. It’s a matter of decency.
[1]You can tell it is an Arab man, because he is wearing a khaffiya.
[2]Actually, the folks in the prayer circle look like U.S. troops to me. It seem kind of unlikely that six out of nine Israeli soldiers would be African-American (Afro-Israeli?).
