{"id":40371,"date":"2016-04-28T17:05:39","date_gmt":"2016-04-28T15:05:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=40371"},"modified":"2016-04-25T14:45:33","modified_gmt":"2016-04-25T12:45:33","slug":"28-05-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=40371","title":{"rendered":"Deir Yassin: another picture worth a thousand lies"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>Deir Yassin: another picture worth a thousand lies<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

Petra Marquardt-Bigman<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>
\nEnglish: Aftermath of the British bombing raid of 3 and 4 April 1945 that destroyed the Boelcke-Kaserne<\/strong> (Boelcke Barracks) located in the south-east of the town of Nordhausen<\/strong> and killed around 1300 inmates<\/strong>. The barracks was a subcamp of the en:Mittelbau-Dora Nazi concentration camp<\/strong>. Used as an overflow camp for sick and dying inmates from January 1945, numbers rose from a few hundred to over 6000, and the conditions saw up to 100 inmates die every day.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u05e2\u05d1\u05e8\u05d9\u05ea: \u05e9\u05d5\u05e8\u05d5\u05ea \u05e9\u05dc \u05d2\u05d5\u05e4\u05d5\u05ea \u05de\u05d0\u05d5\u05ea \u05d0\u05e1\u05d9\u05e8\u05d9\u05dd \u05d1\u05d7\u05e6\u05e8 \u05de\u05d7\u05e6\u05d4 \u05d4\u05e8\u05d9\u05db\u05d5\u05d6 \u05e0\u05d5\u05e8\u05d3\u05d4\u05d0\u05d5\u05d6\u05df. \u05d1\u05ea\u05de\u05d5\u05e0\u05d4 \u05e0\u05e8\u05d0\u05d5\u05ea \u05e4\u05d7\u05d5\u05ea \u05de\u05de\u05d7\u05e6\u05d9\u05ea \u05d4\u05d2\u05d5\u05e4\u05d5\u05ea \u05e9\u05dc \u05d4\u05d0\u05e1\u05d9\u05e8\u05d9\u05dd \u05e9\u05de\u05ea\u05d5 \u05d1\u05e8\u05e2\u05d1 \u05d0\u05d5 \u05d1\u05d9\u05e8\u05d9\u05d5\u05ea \u05d0\u05e0\u05e9\u05d9 \u05d4\u05d2\u05e1\u05d8\u05e4\u05d5.<\/span><\/p>\n

Italiano: File di cadaveri di prigionieri riempiono il cortile del lager di Nordhausen, un campo di concentramento dalla Gestapo.<\/span>
\n\"File:Rows<\/a><\/p>\n

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Last week, some people on Twitter were marking the anniversary of the 1948 Deir Yassin massacre in which about 100 Palestinian villagers were killed by Irgun and Lehi forces. Among the widely shared pictures that were supposedly showing the aftermath of the massacre, I noticed one that seemed suspicious: despite the photo\u2019s low resolution, one could make out rather large buildings that would have been unusual in a small Arab village at the time; moreover, the buildings looked heavily damaged \u2013 again something that didn\u2019t quite fit with the weapons available to the Irgun and Lehi fighters \u2013 and it also seemed that some of the bodies were clad in the kind of striped prisoner clothing known from pictures of Nazi concentration camps.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

It was hardly surprising to see individuals like former Hamas health minister Basem Naim \u2013 who is not averse to circulating misappropriated images to demonize Israel \u2013 promoting such a questionable photo. But I soon discovered that the Egyptian English-language Ahram Online also featured this image as the first in a photo gallery on \u201cDeir Yassin \u2013 An Israeli massacre in Palestine 68 years ago.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Ahram identified the source of the image as the Palestinian information center (PIC) website; and sure enough, a search on the site turned up a 2015 article on \u201cDeir Yassin: Unforgettable Massacre\u201d that includes this photo and, incidentally, exaggerates the death toll: \u201cHundreds of Palestinian women, children, and elderly were killed.\u201d So apparently, PIC wants its audience to believe that Irgun and Lehi were careful not to kill any men in their prime, let alone any Palestinian fighters.<\/span><\/p>\n

PIC is a site set up first in 1997; it is available in multiple languages and \u201caims to promote awareness about Palestine, the Palestinians and the Palestinian issue and to balance the often distorted picture presented in the mainstream media;\u201d PIC also claims to be \u201cthe voice of the Palestinian people and their long struggle for justice.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Pity that this \u201cvoice of the Palestinian people\u201d is resorting to cheap \u201cPallywood\u201d-style propaganda.<\/span><\/p>\n

To be sure, Pallywood propaganda works: when I used a screenshot of the photo for an image search, Google promptly suggested that the most likely match was the Deir Yassin massacre. Only when I searched for the image adding \u201cNazi camps\u201d I got as the top result a Ha\u2019aretz book review from December 2014 that was illustrated with the same image captioned: \u201cRows of bodies fill the yard of the Boelcke Barracks, a subcamp of the Mittelbau-Dora Nazi concentration camp. Credit: Wikicommons \/ T4c. James E Myers.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The Wikicommons image can be found here; its description reads: \u201cAftermath of the British bombing raid of 3 and 4 April 1945 that destroyed the Boelcke-Kaserne (Boelcke Barracks) located in the south-east of the town of Nordhausen and killed around 1300 inmates. The barracks was a subcamp of the en:Mittelbau-Dora Nazi concentration camp. Used as an overflow camp for sick and dying inmates from January 1945, numbers rose from a few hundred to over 6000, and the conditions saw up to 100 inmates die every day.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Continuing my search, I confirmed another suspicion: the tireless blogger Elder of Ziyon had already dealt with the misappropriation of this image, which he discovered three years ago when Omid Safi, a professor of Islamic Studies at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, used the photo to illustrate a blog post on the Deir Yassin massacre. As Elder of Ziyon noted in an update, Safi eventually removed the photo and replaced it with another one \u2013 which again has apparently nothing to do with Deir Yassin, but is most likely taken from the Sabra and Shatila massacres committed by Lebanese Christian Phalangists in September 1982. Needless to say, also this image remains popular as supposedly showing the aftermath of the Deir Yassin massacre; indeed, an apparently related image is also included (#10) in the Ahram Online gallery.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is perhaps no wonder that Arabs and Palestinians keep claiming that Israelis and Jews fake their own history \u2013 whether it\u2019s evidence of ancient Jewish roots in the historic Land of Israel or evidence of the genocide committed against Europe\u2019s Jews. After all, as amply documented, Palestinians and their supporters do it all the time, and they quite obviously don\u2019t feel that it is somehow undignified to use either fabricated or misappropriated images to promote their narrative of almost unfathomable Israeli and Zionist evil. Personally, I find it particularly pathetic when this is done even in instances like the Deir Yassin massacre, where lying would seem to add little, since it really is a stain on Israel\u2019s record in the fighting that was part of the war of independence.<\/span><\/p>\n

But there is no denying that this utter lack of honesty and integrity has gained widespread acceptance and indeed even academic approval. Courtesy of the notorious anti-Israel group \u201cJewish Voice for Peace,\u201d we learnt recently that \u201cdozens of respected Palestinian, Israeli, and American academics\u201d are vigorously protesting a \u201cshocking and outrageous act of censorship of the Palestinian narrative from US schoolbooks.\u201d The \u201cPalestinian narrative\u201d that is being so ruthlessly \u2018censored\u2019 is reflected in a series of maps that supposedly document Israel\u2019s take-over of \u201cPalestinian\u201d land, but the maps have been shown to be completely misleading, and as one critic put it, the academics who want them taught arguably \u201cshouldn\u2019t be in academia.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps the academics who demand that US college students should be taught from textbooks that feature misleading maps demonizing Israel would also see no problem with using an image from a Nazi concentration camp to illustrate the \u201cPalestinian narrative\u201d of the massacre at Deir Yassin. What\u2019s wrong with exaggerating the death toll and destruction at Deir Yassin \u2013 or anywhere else, as long as Palestinians feel it promotes their \u201cnarrative\u201d of victimization at the hands of Israel?<\/span><\/p>\n

Needless to say, the notion that subjective \u201cnarratives\u201d should not be scrutinized, but instead be accepted as somehow equivalent to factual reality is fashionable beyond the Arab-Israeli conflict and reflects broader intellectual trends (or some might say, broader intellectual decline). But even at a time when it is fashionable to assert that there are no objective facts, it remains a fact that the photo that is so popular as an image of the Deir Yassin massacre is actually \u2013 in fact \u2013 a photo of a bombed Nazi concentration camp. There is also the telling fact that the Palestinian information center decided to promote this image as documenting the Deir Yassin massacre. It was most definitely a successful deception: Google believed it; Ahram Online believed it; and countless social media users are continuing to promote the image year after year.<\/span><\/p>\n

Before long, there may be dozens of \u201crespected\u201d academics who will demand that this image should be featured in US textbooks to teach students about the Deir Yassin massacre. After all, if the Palestinians feel that this image adequately conveys what happened at Deir Yassin, it\u2019s part of their legitimate \u201cnarrative,\u201d right? And maybe the activists who marked the Deir Yassin massacre at a demonstration in Jerusalem by reading the names of the victims could in the future add the names of the victims of the bombing of the Boelcke Barracks? It would be more than ten times as many \u2013 so it would be more dramatic, and since facts don\u2019t matter, anything goes, right?<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\"PetraPetra Marquardt-Bigman<\/strong> is a politically homeless lapsed leftist who can\u2019t get used to living in a time when the Nazi slogan \u201cThe Jews are our misfortune\u201d is considered quite acceptable in its 21st century version \u201cThe Jewish state is our misfortune.\u201d She therefore writes mostly about antisemitism, anti-Israel activism and BDS, i.e. Bigoted Double Standards. She grew up in Germany and has a Ph.D. in contemporary history.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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twoje uwagi, linki, wlasne artykuly, lub wiadomosci przeslij do: webmaster@reunion68.com<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Deir Yassin: another picture worth a thousand lies Petra Marquardt-Bigman English: Aftermath of the British bombing raid of 3 and 4 April 1945 that destroyed the Boelcke-Kaserne (Boelcke Barracks) located in the south-east of the town of Nordhausen and killed around 1300 inmates. The barracks was a subcamp of the en:Mittelbau-Dora Nazi concentration camp. Used […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40371"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40371"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40371\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40394,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40371\/revisions\/40394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}