Here’s a photograph taken during the ghoulish dead baby display after Israel’s bombing of the town of Qana, at the height of the Hizballah media blitz, but from a different angle than the dozens and dozens of similar photos that were splashed all over the front pages of the newspapers of the world.

This angle’s a revealing one, an angle that for some reason, we haven’t seen before: the view from behind the “paramedics” who paraded with bodies for hours, staging and arranging them for an obviously very eager world media. (Hat tip: Viggo.)

Jeroen Oerlemans, The Netherlands, Panos Pictures.

Paramedics show the dead body of a baby to the press after Israeli bombing of Qana, Lebanon, 30 July

UPDATE at 2/9/07 5:03:06 pm:

Why was this picture left in the editor’s kill file until now?

Because it really wrecks the suspension of disbelief that actors need to convince the audience.

It’s like seeing the scaffolds and lights and fake landscapes behind the scenes at a theater, in the middle of a performance.

The Qana photographs are some of the most gut-wrenching, heart-breaking images you could ever imagine. And that’s why it’s important to recognize that there are people with souls so dead and intentions so evil that they will cynically use these photographs to manipulate your feelings.

But imagine if pictures like the one above had the same 24/7 coverage as all those pictures with a weeping rescuer running alone down a dusty road. Context, anyone?

UPDATE at 2/9/07 6:03:18 pm:

More context, via Outcut TV:

UPDATE at 2/10/07 8:09:25 am:

EU Referendum notices that this photograph appears to be from a completely different sequence, shot in a different location than the ones previously seen. How many more images like this exist, showing what was really going on behind the scenes?