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Msnbc.com ran this picture by AFP photographer Hazem Bader in our Jan. 26 The Week in Pictures. Other publications including The International Herald Tribune, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The Guardian also ran the picture. Controversy has swirled since publication. Both the photographer and the picture agency have been accused of biased reporting.
The Israeli embassy in Washington wrote to U.S. newspapers shortly after publication. The letter said that the vehicle in the picture was stationary and that medics from the Israeli Defense Forces and Red Crescent determined the construction worker had not been injured. In its letter, the embassy asked newspapers to issue a correction that the construction worker’s injury was not confirmed independently and possibly was staged. The embassy asked newspapers “to consider ceasing to publish the photographs of Hazem Bader.”
The Agence France-Presse (AFP) picture agency responded to the criticism in a press release dated Feb. 3, “After several days of thorough research by our Jerusalem Bureau, AFP wishes to confirm the veracity of both the picture and the accompanying caption.”
AL-DIRAT : An injured Palestinian construction worker screams in pain after an Israeli army driver drove a trailer hooked to a tractor over his legs, as he tried to block him when Israeli forces stopped workers on January 25, 2012 from building a house in al-Dirat village, south of Yatta in the southern Bank town Hebron region. The Israeli forces were seizing the equipment and trailer from the construction workers as the site falls in the occupied zone C in which Israel prevents Palestinians from building on their land. AFP PHOTO / HAZEM BADER
The picture agency’s Jerusalem bureau photo editor interviewed other media representatives who were present at the scene. They say, “Their trust in the events described by Hazem Bader is unequivocal.”
AFP also interviewed the injured construction worker, Mahmud Abu Qbeita, on Feb. 1, as well as the doctors who treated him at the Yatta hospital. A medical certificate is included in AFP’s press release. It states, “In the medical examination we found that he has pain in his right knee, pain in his pelvis, and pain in the neck, and has difficulty in walking. We conducted x-rays on him and found fractures. He has been advised to consult the orthopedic department."
However, Tamar Sternthal argues the other side in his Feb. 6 opinion piece in ynetnews.com. Sternthal says AFP claims to have viewed video footage of the construction worker being carried away after the incident, but does not claim to have seen footage of him actually being run over.
AFP unwittingly drew attention to a key point: of the several photographers on site who were snapping away, not one has released a single image of Abu Qbeita as he was being run over.
Sternthal also attacks the medical certificate that AFP offered and challenges the existence of the construction worker’s x-rays when he writes, “He (Mahmud Abu Qbeita) does not offer to show the x-rays, nor has AFP released them.
The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) also criticizes AFP’s response, saying there are discrepancies between Bader’s original caption and what AFP says in their Feb. 3 press release.
AFP appears to be done with the argument. The last line of their press release says, “We will not make any further comment.”
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Looks like just another instance of Israeli brutalization of Palestinians. Why would the French press act as a propaganda vehicle for another country? First the Israeli occupy the Palestinian's land. Then they divide it into "zones". Then they make the rule that the Palestinians can only live and build their homes in one zone (the ghetto zone). When the Palestinians build on their land outside the zone designated by the Israeli occupiers, the Israeli army comes, confiscates their construction vehicles and apparently crushes one of the workers who happens to get in the way. When the photos are published in the press, the Israeli obfuscate and claim the photos are a lie. Does this look similiar to what happened between Germans and Jews in Warsaw and elsewhere during WWII? And these people support terrorists why?
Actually it appears to actually be yet another French Press in league with the Palestinians incident much like the
Muhammad al-Durrah incident... something that was subject to endless trials in France after the lies it spread for the Palestinians were exposed.
Oh yea, like the Israelis are saints and never do ANY unwarranted harm to the Palestinians. Give me a BREAK!
Didn't the Israelis have their own video and photographers on-scene? Have they offered any video or photo evidence disputing Bader's version of events? Or simply the word of their own men that were there conducting the operation? Based on AFP's response, they seemed to have performed due diligence in verifying the original report. It would seem the only thing to dispute the original findings would be contradictory video or photography, none of which has been presented.
Reading this from Olympia, Washington. Rachel Corrie left Olympia to protest demolition of Palestinian houses and an Israeli tank ran over her and killed her.
How about a story about the death and distruction that the continous bombardment of rockets being showered on Israel. Bias reporting.
Why can't the so-called Palestinians build houses and towns in Jordan, the Sinai, Saudi Arabia, etc? Plenty of open vacant land there, not so much in Israel though. What difference does it make? It's all the same type of land. They just want to supplant the Israeli's by taking over their land and then pissing all over it like the rest of the arab world, whereas Israelis at least respect their own land and take care of it...
Israel steals Palestinian land and brutalizes it's people. When someone takes a picture of their atrocities, they scream that it is unfair to present them in this way because 'they are good people'...