All Your Fakes Are Belong to Us
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Point well taken. And civilly made.
Or if you believe that the blame for the deaths of those innocent civilians lies entirely with the same people faking these photos -- i.e., Hezbollah and its supporters.
Hate to ruin your self-righteous civility, but you are offbase. Jawas are from Star Wars. They are commonly referred to as "Sand People" throughout the movies. The Jawa in the clip was made to resemble them. The "Sand People" isn't (or at least isn't likely) a reference to Arabs or the like.
I'm sure he is well aware of where Jawas are from, and the origin of the reference only illustrates what he's talking about. What's the point of a Jawa's inclusion if not to make fun of Arabs as "sand people," eh?
Civility indeed.
Is it attacking Israel for trying to claim that the destruction they wrought on civilian areas was "faked" by Hezbollah?
Or is it attacking Hezbollah for orchestrating photographers to take compelling pictures of the destruction?
If it's the latter, I wonder what would happen if Hezbollah dared (gasp!) to hire actors and make a movie about the Lebanon genocide. Perhaps something similar to Schindler's list or one of the other holocaust movies. I think the world would emphatically say:
"No Arabs! Only Jews have that right!"
Something tells me Gonzalez v. Raich had a different outcome in the house of Barnett.
Are you aware that many completely innocent civilians were killed in Lebanon who were simply caught in the crossfire? Or that, as Israel admits, it attacked Qana with no evidence that - as it initially claimed - Hzb fighters were in the building or that missiles were fired from the building? And that Israel admits that approximately 60 people, including many children, were killed in the building?
The point, again, is not that Israel is at fault for not always using surgical precision (although, to carry the analogy further, they should have at least operated on the right patient). The point is that this video, and other similar conspiracy theory tinged ideas, spreads the idea that there were *no* civilian casualties in Lebanon. The fact that people in lebanon may have arranged scenes to emphasize the civilian or children casualties is a very minor transgression, if a trangression at all, given the fact that innocent civilians and children were actually killed. And I find it rather dishonest to focus on the "staging" of photos without acknowledging that they do reflect the underlying reality, which even Israel does not deny.
I'm well aware of the casualties on both sides. I'm equally aware, however, that even the use(misuse/abuse) of photography can be assymetric. For religious reasons, as an example, Israelis do not parade their dead before cameras. Israeli dead, therefore, are mostly invisible to global audiences. Hezbollah, Hamas, and many other terrorist groups do not hesistate to make emotional points that short-circuit the reasoning process.
No matter the number of victims, there will always be (in the media, anyway) more from one side than the other. The horror of violent death is equal, but the imagery in the public domain is not.
The video appears to have two purposes: to remind viewers that what they see is not necessarily the entire truth and to remind viewers that photojournalism is subject to intentional distortion if the photojournalists and their editors aren't truly professional.
If it's the latter, I wonder what would happen if Hezbollah dared (gasp!) to hire actors and make a movie about the Lebanon genocide. Perhaps something similar to Schindler's list or one of the other holocaust movies. I think the world would emphatically say:
"No Arabs! Only Jews have that right!"
Moral relativity is my pet peeve.
The photos in the youtube montage was held out to the world as real...taken in real time. It was reported as news. However, when the truth be told it was manipulative, false and propaganda.
Compare the fake photos to the movie Schindler you mentioned. We know we are watching a recreation! Although many of the events can be confirmed through historical accounts, there's no way to know the individual conversations that transacted during the movie. The audience knows this premise walking into the movie theater.
Most people would assume that civilian casualties are bound to occur wherever there's a war. I don't see where in the video it says that there were no civilian Lebanese casualties; I don't remember them mentioning Israeli civilian casualties either, does that imply there were none?
I think the makers emphasized MSM complicity and craven acquiescence in this nonsense more than anything else; I don't think I'm naive or anything, but that your news outlets and deranged Islamists did carry out attempts to stage images for your consumption, that doesn't worry you?
BTW That "Qana 60" has subsequently been revised, and I don't think the Israelis would "admit" to any number without verification. Or at least, their lawyers shouldn't have allowed them to say anything on it until independent verification.
If they can bring down the likes of Dan Rather, it hardly matters.
Wait, how does the point remain? Jawas are NOT referred to as Sand People in Starwars. The Sand People are an entirely different type of creature. Therefore, it makes no sense to say that they used a Jawa in this clip to insult Arabs. Randy take back your apology and go watch Episode IV again.
"yes, the Sand People scare easily but they'll be back . . . and in greater numbers."
And this is an example of his mind at play?
A popular guerilla movement vs the one of the most powerful militaries in the world and an attack that was promised to " send Lebanon back 20 years,"
And you respond with this.
6 Israeli civilians killed by Hezbollah. from 2000 to June. Others after the beginning- not before- the Israeli attack.
No history, no context and the logic of adolescent payback. wow
It most certainly does. Credibility is always at issue when trying to prove or disprove something.
Kinda like confusing the Cao Dai with the Viet Cong.
I think that those who have implied that they are interchangeable are guilty of the worst sort of colonialist/racist "disappearing" of difference in order to facilitate the imperialist discource of conquest by means of an essetialist manipulation.
(OK. I'm done. Ran out of adjectives.)
The pro-HzB crowd here prefers "fake but [presumed] accurate" to real journalism. But there is no point in arguing with them...
Wikipedia's explanation found here.
FYI, the phrase is also a cheat code for instant-winning missions on the computer game Starcraft.
And by the way, the Jawa isn't supposed to be an "Arab terrorist." The Jawa represents the mysterious and tireless bloggers who are hard at work outing the facile MSM.
Way to miss the point guys.
Of course Hizbollah does everything it can to attract attention to innocent civilian deaths - every government and organization uses such propaganda. (See George Bush standing on the rubble of the WTC for example)
You understand that thousands of people were killed right?
Is that fake?
Unbelievable.
As Adam suggested, I'm indeed aware of the word "jawa"'s origin. I am also aware, and concede, ---sigh---, that "jawas" are not the "sand people" in the Star Wars movies nor would an avid fan make that mistake. I never suggested otherwise. My point, nevertheless, stands: the word is not uncommonly used to refer to Arabs in a despective manner and those (not unsubstantial) number of (imprecise) people use the word "jawa" because THEY believe it means "sand people", as my Cartman quote suggested. A simple Google search would have confirmed this.
On the other hand, whether you wish to use the word or not to refer to Arabs is entirely up to you. In my opinion, however, it would be uncivil to do so-- the imagination of George Lucas preserved or not.
I'm pretty sure this is meant to be an ironic anti-Israel video. It's making fun of Israel's claim that what they did to Lebanon was staged by Hezbollah.
He should have put pictures of the oil spill in there though.
A
What has happened to purportedly intelligent people - good god almighty a number of them attorneys who are presumably among the backbone of rational, civil society - peddling something like this?
Are you being sarcastic?
Yes, Te, but the difference here is Hizbollah caused those deaths by 1) starting the war and 2) fighting it in such a way that extra civilian deaths were inevitable. It's amazing there were so few.
But that's not the point of the video. The point is the news organizations aren't doing their job. We all expect biased news, but when they start passing obvious fakes off as reality they cross the line between a news organization and a rumor mill.
At least when Hezbollah kills civilians, they have the moral integrity to admit what they're doing.
But not Zionists! They want to (1) kill thousands of civilians, (2) destroy their homes, (3) destroy their beaches with oil which will take a decade to clean (4) deny responsibility for what they did AND AMAZINGLY (4) claim to be the victim!
Disgusting people.
Exactly! It was one flare, not three. Three flares totally changes the effect of the image. And the smoke wasn't that dark, or that much. Sure there was smoke, just not quite that dark or quite that much which totally changes what the picture conveys!
As I said, accentuate the trivial (or in many cases, irrelevant). What other choice does one in this position have?
Wait! Don't start filming yet! You can still see downtown San Diego in the background and we're supposed to be too far off shore for a helicopter flight.
Trivial? Yeah, it is too. So I would never equate Karl Rove with Hezzbollah PR men. But I get the feeling that many here, if they had a shred of intellectual honesty that is, would jump at the chance.
People die everyday. Get used to it.
All Men Must Die.
I imagine that Hzb would respond to point 1 by saying that they were only attacking a country which was occupying territory or that they were responding to some other slight. There's no point in opening up that pissing match.
As for point two, I guess that Hzb could have separated themselves as much as possible from the civilian population by placing their rocket launchers in clearly marked fields or something. Of course, they would have been killed. I also imagine that Hzb would be happy to decamp from some of the civilian areas in exchange for the sort of sophisitcated long range aircraft and artillery possessed by Israel. But, as Rumsfeld says, you go to war with the army you have.
No the "point" of the video is to do whatever its creator can get away with to minimize the scale of the horror. It is a page out of the playbook of holocaust denyers and even the litigation strategy of tobacco companies. The propagandists know that they would destroy their credibility if they just flat out denied that any civilians were killed on the Lebanon side. So what they do is focus their efforts on creating discussions and focusing attention on the quite unsurprising fact that Hzb is engaging in propaganda - sometimes dishonestly. It is the same with people who deny the holocaust. Few would dare say that no jews/homosexuals/poles/gypsies were killed. No. Instead they focus obsessively on diagrams of gas chambers and estimates of how many people could be cremated per hour in an oven of a given size and then suggest that that the "numbers" are wildly overinflated. Then less subtle people will seize on this as evidence that that "all" of the holocaust claims must be overinflated. The same thing has happened several times in previous threads on VC re this. Several posters have made the astonishingly illogical argument that "If they (whoever "they" are) would stage photos they would do anything.
This is the 4th or 5th thread devoted to the guy in the green helmet, staged photos, etc. It is all part of an effort to avoid the obvious (Gee, there are lots of dead children and civilians) and focus on whatever can be cobbled together to hurt the credibility of "the other side."
The JAWA comes from the JAWAREPORT - a stupid blog written by dirty animals. It has nothing to do with an ethnic slight against arabs.
I don't think it's so amazing the Israelis claim to be the victem, since the first blow was struck by Hizbollah. You keep glossing over that point. If Hizbollah wanted peace they could have done the easiest thing in the world... nothing.
They killed six Israeli soldiers and kidnapped two others. Do you not recognize this as an act of war?
Also, as Hizbollah conducted attacks from behind civilians they are culpable for the deaths of those civilians, both as a matter of international law and one of common sense. So, yes, it's perfectly reasonable and logical for Israel to deny responsibility for those deaths. Because they are not responsible.
Question: If I am ever caught up in a Columbine incident, will you defend my decision to hold a baby up in front of me as a human shield? I wouldn't HAVE to do it, if I didn't I might be hurt.
I don't know how deluded someone has to be to expect their victim to die quietly, without alerting the MSM.
So you are equating Israel to a psychotic teenager on a killing spree at a high school? Interesting.
The more accurate comparison is probably to compare the IDF to the various SWAT teams and police officers outside the school. Would they be justified in opening full-auto fire on the building because the gunmen were inside. I don't think so.
Nice try.
Actually, I am pointing out that it would be inexcusable to put an innocent between you and the bullets EVEN if you were totally inocent yourself and simply a victim of circumstances beyond your control - like you would be if you were caught in a shooting spree.
Hezbollah is hardly "innocent" - they contributed to this shooting spree - so they have even LESS excuse.
Hezbollah is to innocent student at Columbine High School shooting as Israel is to ____________?
Is the news flash here that Hezbollah is a bunch of assholes? No dispute there.
The question is what do you do to counter a bunch of assholes without losing your humanity.
Consider these scenarios:
1) Gang of Israeli citizen goes nuts and kills 6 soldiers and kidnaps 2 others then flees into Lebanon.
2) Hizbullah gang (presumably not Israeli citizens) does same thing and then flees into Lebanon
Would these both be military actions to go after the gang? Or would the first be a police matter and the second a military matter?
This rather turns reality on its head. The “point” of at least some of the original photographs was to exaggerate civilian casualties and Israeli actions well beyond reality (Jenin redux?). This allows critics of Israel such as President Chavez of Venezuela (and now apparently te) to demonize Israel and make the rather stunning leap of equivalence to Nazi Germany and holocaust deniers. In order to make this type of brazen claim, extreme evidence really helps. So a photograph of a Red Cross ambulance targeted by an Israeli missile really helps. And if it never happened, no problem – you can just fake it. (Contrary to a previous poster, some of these fakes were far from trivial). No better way to demonstrate the “evil” of Israel than through showing a targeted attack on the Red Cross. And people who point out that these photographs are frauds, are equated by te and his ilk to holocaust deniers. Quite amazing.
Do you really have so little intellectual throw weight behind you arguments that the best you can come up with is to link me to Hugo Chavez.
And people who point out that these photographs are frauds, are equated by te and his ilk to holocaust deniers. Quite amazing.
I didn't call them frauds. I am just pointing out that they are using the same intellectually dishonest approach of avoiding reality pioneered by holocause deniers and the tobacco companies.
To make this as simple as I can - killing children is worse than lying - at least as far as I am concerned. Nobody has denied that children were killed (by both sides, by the way) in this latest little war. To focus obsessively about some lying or "staging" while completely ignoring dead children is a symptom of a moral outlook that is in the final stages of decay.
Link to NY Times Story
Seems possible. Some "freedoms" we have in this country these days. Time to contribute to the ACLU.
Hey te! Hezbollah violated the Geneva Conventions when they operated from and among civilians homes. The Geneva provides that military are supposed to have separate base of operations away from civilians. They are to dress differently than civilians so that they can be identifiable by the party at war. Have you seen a Hezbollah uniform? Me neither. This is a legal blog. It only makes sense to point out that Hezbollah is responsible for these deaths.
I didn't call them frauds. I am just pointing out that they are using the same intellectually dishonest approach of avoiding reality pioneered by holocause deniers and the tobacco companies.
To make this as simple as I can - killing children is worse than lying - at least as far as I am concerned. Nobody has denied that children were killed (by both sides, by the way) in this latest little war. To focus obsessively about some lying or "staging" while completely ignoring dead children is a symptom of a moral outlook that is in the final stages of decay.
This response seems not quite connected with my post - please re-read my last sentence. I never said that you called the photograph skeptics “frauds” – I said that you equated the people who identified the fraudulent photographs to holocaust deniers. And you appear to repeat this libel in your response. Perhaps your view is that they are not the same as holocaust deniers but just use the same approach. If so, this is a distinction without a difference. In any case, you fall squarely under the ambit of Godwin’s law.
Your straw man argument of “killing children is worse than lying” is rather silly. No-one has claimed any different and I am sure we can argue all day about who is primarily responsible for the civilian casualties. But is your view that because civilians were killed, it become irresponsible (or in your breathless prose “is a symptom of a moral outlook that is in the final stages of decay”) to point out that casualties and damage were grossly exaggerated? Does this also mean that anyone who pointed out the error of the MSM’s reporting of 100’s killed in the Jenin “massacre” (the real death toll was 56 Palestinians, most of them combatants, and 23 Israeli soldiers) was suffering from moral decay?
I think you may have lost perspective here.
Basically, it hits too close to home and everyone is rushing to distance themselves from it in the hopes of reassuring themselves that they actually give a damn.
So act outraged if you wish, but you're wasting your time.
We live in a state of media and information saturation. We receive a critical mass of data from every corner of the globe. The amount of human suffering pumped into our living rooms is unimaginable.
Human beings were not meant to have this much awareness of every spot of misery on the globe. The only possible option is to block out a great deal of it.
I've heard personal stories from the victims of Israeli airstrikes and the victims of Hezbollah rocket fire. It tears my heart out to hear these things.
But thing is, I simply don't have enough in me to commit to this crisis emotionally. It's not that I don't care, it's just that I've decided to devote my sphere of interest and compassion to where it will do the most good.
Lebanon is not one of those places.
So when all is said and done, the ugly truth of it is:
I care more about false reporting from the MSM than I do about the humanitarian crisis in Lebanon. That's closer to home and it impacts my own corner of humanity more than some Lebanese family losing their apartment.
So the fact is, I didn't even see a video about human suffering. I saw a video about dishonest and hypocritical news reporting. And that is all I saw. I felt the MSM deserved what it got in that video.
So I say again. You guys are missing the point. This video isn't about human suffering. Dead Lebanese are pretty-much irrelevant to the whole thing. It's about human hypocrisy. It's about pretending you care what happens to people when all you really care about is "making good political copy."
I'll admit my weakness here. I care more about lying reporters than I do about bombed-out Lebanese apartment buildings. Not because I "don't care." But because I do care deeply and I just don't have the capacity to emotionally connect with every scrap of human misery worldwide on a daily basis.
As such, I thought the video was timely, pointed, appropriate, richly deserved, and ... downright funny.
And I'm at peace with that.
To the indignant, the self-righteous, or the simply disturbed who have issued venom on this video - ask yourselves why this really made you so mad.
Are you truly emotionally connected with the humanitarian crisis in Lebanon (and I'm not saying it's impossible that you are), or are you simply trying to shore-up your own self-image as a "caring person?"
If you want to connect with humanity, I would suggest spending time at your local soup kitchen, or visiting mom and dad in the rest home. Because for most of you, there's really nothing you can do to help the Lebanese or the Israelis. Better to help the REAL people in your lives than the THEORETICAL people on your TV screen.
actually, a better analogy is with these guys
" One of the most important propaganda lies of the 1990s featured the Serb-run Trnopolje camp, visited by Britain's ITN reporters in August 1992. These reporters photographed the resident Fikret Alic, showing him emaciated and seemingly inside a concentration camp fence. ... But this hugely dishonest photo was featured everywhere in the West as proving a Serb-organized Auschwitz, was denounced by NATO high officials, and helped provide the moral basis for the creation of the ICTY and its clear focus on Serb evil."
It all depends on whose Ox is gored I guess.