Cropoganda

On February 24, Israeli troops entered Dheisheh refugee camp near Bethlehem to arrest a Palestinian terrorist. During the ensuing street clashes, Jihad al-Jafari was shot and killed. If you accept the Israeli version of the story, al-Jafari was the "leader of the rioters" and was fired upon only after a soldier was physically injured and the others felt endangered by incendiary devices and cinder blocks which were being thrown down at them from the rooftops.

Al Jazeera, which provided the above photograph, does not deny that Jihad was on the roof when he was shot, but claims that he was asleep at the time of the raid and only went up to the roof when he heard a commotion in the street below. The only evidence for this assertion appears to be from an interview given by Jibreen al-Bakari, the Palestinian Authority Governor for the area to the Voice of Palestine.  According to a local resident, al-Jafari "was a very nice person. The soldiers had no reason to kill him. He was innocent. A simple, lovely kid."

While I find it hard to believe that al-Jaafari was so naive as to be unaware that the rooftops of the refugee camps are the meurtrières of the modern age, he does, indeed, look like just a kid in the article's accompanying photograph.

Or does he? Here is the uncropped photo:

Obviously, the above photo plays havoc with the narrative that the journalists at Al Jazeera present. The editorial decision to crop the photo should seriously call into question their "reporting."

Yet, perhaps the worst offender was the New York Times. While the Times article briefly presents the Israeli version of events early on in the article, the rest is dedicated to the unverified Palestinian claims that al-Jafari sleeepwalked his way onto the roof. Even worse, the Times gives voice to the unsubstantiated claim that, "Israeli snipers immediately opened fire and shot him in cold blood."

In almost the same breath, the Times reporter Isabel Kershner, proceeds to tie this incident to the withholding of tax revenues and reductions in the electricity supply to the Palestinian Authority. How these events are interconnected remains unclear, but the reporting definitely smacks of an attempt at what social scientists call "contextualization" - a "big picture" approach that attempts to situate events into a broader context.

In those cases where causal links can be demonstrated, contextualization can be an important corrective to simplistic or reductionist explanations. On the other hand, where causality cannot be demonstrated or is assumed, it can be misused to dispense with agency (i.e. free will) by citing supposed underlying causes. In this case, Kershner elicits sympathy for the predicament that Palestinians find themselves in while tacitly absolving them of any responsibility for their actions.

At the same time, Israeli actions are simply presented as a given. They exist in a contextual vacuum and the article makes no attempt to uncover or disclose why the Israeli army chose to "raid" the camp in the first place.

Worst of all, even though the Times undoubtedly had acccess to the above photo, it's editors chose to crop it out all together. In his writings, Foucault called this the "administration of silence" or the other side of discourse that serves to delimit it. It certainly seems like the editors at the Times chose to completely crop out the photo lest its readers try to form their own opinions about Jihad.