Students share their summer experiences in Northern Israel
Josh Hantz
Posted: 9/1/06
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Rabbi Hershey Novack, director of Chabad on Campus at the University, pointed out specific examples of media bias. He mentioned an incident in which Reuters withdrew two photographs of the conflict after discovering they had been altered in Photoshop. A freelance Lebanese photographer darkened and added smoke to one picture, showing the destruction in Beirut after an Israeli air strike. In another, the photographer increased the number of flares being dropped from an F-16 fighter from one to three.
Reuters has suspended the photographer until it completes further investigations on the photos he altered.
"There is certainly some amount of overt media bias against Israel," said Novack.
Novack's sister Tziporah was living in Safed, another city in northern Israel, when Hezbollah started launching rockets. She also evacuated to a safer place.
"Her initial impression was that the rocket attacks were a passing phenomenon," he said. "That was the pervasive mood at the time."
Tziporah stayed longer in Safed than most of her community, though, before leaving the area.
Now that the violence is at a standstill with a shaky ceasefire, people reflect on the situation and how it could have been handled more effectively.
"There are those who feel that it was a military intelligence failure [by Israel]," said Novack. "Others feel that ground troops should have been committed earlier."
But he believes that Israel learns quickly from the past and that such circumstances will not reoccur.
Currently Israel is rejecting United Nations (UN) demands to lift the sea and air blockade of Lebanon. It will only do so after the UN fully implements its ceasefire, according to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
