(Reprinted from the website of honestreporting.com)
On November 4, Israeli forces destroyed a tunnel near the Gaza border that was to be used by Hamas to kidnap Israeli soldiers. The AFP (Agence France-Presse) photo below shows the apparent aftermath. (Caption: A man sifts through rubble after Israel's overnight operation.)
Is AFP the victim of a staged photo? Did Hamas deliberately place a toy rabbit on top of the rubble for propaganda purposes? Or, worse, did AFP's photographer collude in this deception? After all, the bright pink rabbit appears to be clean and remarkably unscathed considering it has supposedly emerged from the rubble of a Palestinian home.
We asked a veteran professional photographer for his opinion. He expressed his concerns to our Backspin blog that the photo may even have been manipulated due to question marks over the motion of the toy, the lighting and the size and angle of the shot. He stated:
My gut feeling was that it was electronically manipulated. But I've seen situations where props like teddy bears or dolls were brought in and laid down next to a scene to create an effect. This brings to mind photos of Qana that included a Mickey Mouse doll. The pink rabbit is a child's toy, and anything that smacks of a child is a cynical use of photography. It's propaganda that Hamas wants, and the photographer is either going along with that in agreement or because he knows the image will sell.
We e-mailed AFP's Jerusalem bureau chief asking for an explanation but he failed to respond. While it may not be possible to prove definitively that this image is staged, based on previous examples and this image itself, there remain enough concerns to relay to AFP.
Please send your considered comments to AFP asking for a proper explanation - go to AFP's contact page - http://www.afp.com/english/afp/?pid=contact - select "Contact photo department" and refer to Marco Longari's photo #83566485 of 5 November.
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