Now you see me…
Now you don’t.
The Israeli ultra-Orthodox paper HaMevaser (“The Announcer”) has photoshopped German chancellor Angela Merkel and Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo out of a photo from Sunday’s anti-terrorism rally in Paris.
Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, meanwhile, was allowed to remain in the picture—because as fraught as his relationship with Israel is, he is not a woman.
HaMevaser and other, similar publications routinely edit women out of photos, sometimes even refusing to publish their names. In 2011, New York Orthodox paper Di Tzeitung magically erased then-secretary of state Hillary Clinton from the famous photo inside the White House situation room during the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. The paper argued the same bogus refrain used by proponents of sexism in other religions—that the removal was done out of respect for women.
Mediaite has a good analysis of how HaMevaser altered the Paris march photo from the original. Aside from being an example of poor photoshopping, the paper’s extremism arguably undermines the whole point of civilized nations uniting to fight religious extremism.
Why should a newspaper publish a photo at all if it doctors it to the point of stripping away its meaning? And why would one claiming to represent Jewish interests, especially, not understand the dangers posed by those who would attempt to rewrite history?