A cease-fire has just gone into effect between Israel and Hamas…

CAIRO — Israel and Hamas agreed to a cease-fire on Wednesday, the eighth day of lethal fighting over the Gaza Strip, the United States and Egypt said after intensive negotiations in Cairo.

The cease-fire, to take effect at 9 p.m. local time (2 p.m. E.S.T.), was formally announced by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Foreign Minister Mohamed Amr of Egypt at a news conference here. The agreement was aimed at quieting an escalating aerial battle between Palestinians and Israelis that had threatened to turn into an Israeli ground invasion of Gaza.

Whether the cease-fire could hold was uncertain at best, and even in the minutes leading up to the effective start time, both sides were firing at each other.

This is in response to a couple of other Pages posted regarding film footage of this week’s Israeli air strikes in Gaza, both of which questioned the authenticity of several BBC video clips that at least one Israeli blog & one far-right Israeli news outlet are presenting as “Pallywood” productions.

“Don’t give anyone your eyes.” —ProverbWhile I don’t deny that there have been numerous cases of staged or distorted videos, not to mention photoshopped images, it’s a mistake to take the default position that nearly everything coming out of Gaza (or the West Bank) is distorted without having sufficient proof of that being the case. Why? Because it’s dehumanizing. To be frank, I don’t give a damn if someone has a good reason for being cynical—just because something is understandable doesn’t make it okay. There have been many, many cases of women who have lied about being raped; does that make it okay to assume by default that all or even most women who claim to have been raped are lying? Of course not, no decent, rational person would think such a thing.

A wise man by the name of Bob Levin once relayed to me a (Jewish?) proverb that I’m going to paraphrase here: Don’t give anyone your eyes. Truer words were never spoken. Never, EVER let others tell you what you’re seeing.

So while this may be too long & boring for many of you, I want to make a point by illustrating just how easily our eyes can be deceived, by both our personal biases & preconceived notions and by the speed at which visual information flies by, causing us to miss many subtle details.

Continue reading…

It’s looking very likely this evening that Israel will launch a ground operation in Gaza, as Defense Minister Ehud Barak has authorized calling up to 75,000 reservists.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak approved the IDF’s request on Friday evening to increase the maximum number of reservists it could enlist, seeking cabinet approval to mobilize up to 75,000 troops ahead of a possible Gaza ground operation.

The Inner Cabinet, a group of nine senior ministers, met for over three hours to discuss the possibility of a ground operation into the Hamas-controlled enclave, but released no statements or indications as to what transpired during the meeting.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, however, told Channel 10 that toppling Hamas is not on the agenda as a goal for Operation Pillar of Defense.

We have yet another wingnut outrageous outrage tonight, courtesy of Andrew Breitbart camp follower Joel Pollak:

» Learning from Hamas: How #Occupy Uses Human Shields-Veterans, Women, the Young, the Old, the Disabled - Big Government

Yes, now the loons at Breitbart’s hate sites are actually calling the OWS protesters “terrorists.”

Wonderful news: five years after being kidnapped by Hamas terrorists, Gilad Shalit has finally returned home.

Here we go again. The New York branch of Fox News shrieks: Mosque Investor Was Terror Contributor.

Except that, uh, he wasn’t.

An Egyptian who’s contributing some money to Park51 once donated money to the Holy Land Foundation — before 9/11, years before the charity was known to be connected to Hamas, because he thought he was donating money for an orphanage. Like thousands of other people did.

Out of this information, Fox gets the headline that he was a “terror contributor.” And of course, the usual idiot’s chorus of anti-Muslim bigot blogs is all over it.

Ugh. This has become a flat out witch hunt now. Everyone who donates money to the Park51 project is going to have their entire past dug up, distorted, and used against them.

UPDATE at 9/3/10 5:13:14 pm:

The Associated Press report on the latest nontroversy underscores the absurdity of trying to make this connection:

Many other donors to the foundation gave thinking their donations would fund humanitarian programs.

Other people and companies who donated money, equipment or services to the foundation the year Elzanaty gave included NBA star Hakeem Olajuwon, the Microsoft Corp., and a medical equipment company owned by General Electric, according to tax records.

When the foundation’s leaders were indicted, Attorney General John Ashcroft said, the case was not “a reflection on the well-meaning people who may have donated funds to the foundation.”

The Reuters “Good, Bad, and Ugly” blog has addressed the cropped photos; they say they were notified by readers, and print several rather blunt emails they received. (Of course, they also became aware of it from LGF almost as soon as I posted about it; my Reuters tracker has recorded more than 100 visits from their Canary Wharf offices since yesterday morning.)

They claim the cropping was inadvertent, failing the smell test: Cropped photos | Analysis & Opinion.

This is all they have to say about it:

The images in question were made available in Istanbul, and following normal editorial practice were prepared for dissemination which included cropping at the edges. When we realized that a dagger was inadvertently cropped from the images, Reuters immediately moved the original set, as well.

The Jerusalem Post reports that the Israeli government has sent an official letter to Reuters CEO Tom Glocer about the photo cropping exposed at LGF: Gov’t disturbed by cropped photos.

A letter was sent to Reuters chief Tom Glocer on Monday expressing the “grave concern of the government of Israel” over the cropping of photographs taken from the Turkish Mavi Marmara ship last week by Minister of Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs MK Yuli Edelstein.

The photos, which were published on Sunday in the Turkish Hurriyet daily, showed images of the commandos, their fatigues stained with blood, subdued by passengers aboard the Mavi Marmara ship but excluded the knives held by the aid activists.

At the popular blog LittleGreenFootballs.com, which initially took note of the missing knife, the blog’s founder Charles Johnson posted the story along with exhibits of both sets of pictures to the site.

Describing the cropping of the images of an “abuse of photo-imagery by Reuters,” Edelstein wrote, “I am sure you are aware that pictures – originally produced by the violent activists aboard the Mavi Marmara and published in the Turkish media - clearly show the use of knives against Israeli servicemen. However, when these pictures were initially distributed on the wires by Reuters picture service they were cropped to exclude the knives and blood that bore evidence of the violent intentions of those who participated in the attacks, and provided vital evidence in support of Israel’s claims.”

The letter was cc’d to David Thomson, Chairman Thomson Reuters, and Alistair MacDonald, Reuters Jerusalem Bureau Chief.

While acknowledging that Reuters has since “distributed the original images,” Edelstein added, “There is of course great concern that the altering of the images distributed could have been done with intent rather than due to mistakes in the editorial process.”

Reuters has now published an uncropped version of the image we noted yesterday morning: Photo from Reuters Pictures.

Notice the timestamp. As I write, it was published to the wires 6 hours ago.

Long after Reuters was caught with the cropped version.

So they’re apparently trying now to quietly release the uncropped versions without acknowledging the alterations.

Please note that the Reuters Guide to Standards and Photoshop makes it clear that 1) this kind of cropping to remove vital context is forbidden, and 2) Reuters’ own standards require a public acknowledgment of corrections and revisions.

Reuters appears to be violating their own published principles and standards.

By the way, since yesterday morning LGF has had 106 visits from people at the Canary Wharf offices of Reuters — far more than usual. And every one of these visits goes directly to one of our posts about the altered photos.

And there isn’t a word about this at the blog of Reuters CEO Tom Glocer.

Here we go again.

The IHH website which was apparently supplying Reuters with their photos (which someone at Reuters then cropped to remove incriminating evidence of weapons) has now removed all photos from their site, possibly to prevent finding any more cropped images. But Reuters continues to publish photos from the “activists.”

For example, this one:

You may recall this video, showing the activists arming themselves with metal pipes, knives, body armor … and broken bottles.

Did Reuters crop this image to remove the jagged end of a broken bottle? I can’t say for sure, since the originals are now hidden by the IHH. But notice the caption:

A pro-Palestinian activist holds a bottle…

Yep, just standing there holding a bottle. I guess you get pretty thirsty wearing a gas mask.