UK Telegraph Tries its Hand at Anti-Israel Fauxtography

Not all Fauxtography involves doctoring of recent news photographs, sometimes news sources take an old picture and change the context.  For example the picture below was taken on by the Associated press in January 14, 2009, right after the end of the most recent Israeli war with Hamas (H/T  Media Backspin)

The Caption reads

"Gaza City, 14 January: An injured Palestinian man looks on as others inspect a damaged building in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood. Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, claims, he persuaded the US to abstain in a UN ceasefire resolution passed the week before."

Last week the UK Daily Telegraph ran an article about the Gaza Blockade, this is how the article looked:

Does the picture look familiar? This time the caption says,

"The blockade prevents Gaza from exporting any goods, putting a crippling squeeze on the local economy, and restricts imports to a limited amount of basic humanitarian aid Photo: AP

Maybe the telegraph used a two year old picture because they were just too lazy to find a new one.  Or what's more likely is that the newspaper couldn't find one because there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza .

“The United Nations says the Israeli blockade has caused a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, an allegation Israel denies.”That is not what the United Nations said. At the end of February the UN’s envoy to the Middle East Robert Serry visited the area and proclaimed “There is no humanitarian problem in Gaza.”

Perhaps The UK Telegraph would have been better off using these photos, from the Palestinian website PalTalk, which presents a totally different picture of Gaza than the Anti-Israel mainstream media does.

Gaza Residents shop for more than just clothes, further down on the same website it shows.



The caption on top of the top picture says,

Shopping and buying Alvake and nuts and needed to receive holiday

There was also some Easter shopping going on, according to a translation of the caption these pictures below are of people buying cakes and sweets for Easter.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but to the mainstream media, a picture is worth a thousand lies.

The UK Telegraph uses old photographs to tell a story of Gaza that is better described as propaganda. The truth is out there, if only the mainstream media cared about the truth enough to look for it.