Snapped Shot

For all of you out there who keep complaining about Israel's "unjust" retaliation on the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, here's a little treat—The IDF identified a Mosque (you know, a civilian, non-combative institution, right?) that was being used by Hamas to store Russian-manufactured Grad rockets that they planned on launching into Israel.

Of course, this violates all kinds of international ethics and standards, which have been drafted over the past 200 years to minimize civilian casualties. But does that stop Hamas in the least? Heck no, it doesn't.

So, alas, since we in the West are apparently too chicken to do anything at all about Hamas' continued use of civilians as shields for their military, the IDF gets to clean that crap up. On New Year's Eve, no less:



Unfortunately for us, most of the international socialist left, who are currently parading around the streets in utter angst, remain utterly ignorant to such simple points.

And thusly, the world will continue to burn.

Quite the Happy New Year's, indeed.

What a year it's been! Things started out normal for us here at Snapped Shot, but quickly turned interesting—in the Chinese curse sort of way—towards March, when we were accosted by the Associated Press. As such, the blog has been doing quite a bit of adjusting over the year, and is definitely a totally different animal now than we were one year ago.

Which is hopefully a good thing. I think the jury's still out on that one.

Anyway, I'd like to thank each and every one of you from the bottom of my heart for continuing to stop by and check out this silly little website. It is truly a pleasure to interact with those of you who write back to us, and it's an honor to spend yet another year bringing something approximately between entertainment and news to your computer screen time and time again. Almost reliably, even!

Enough of the sappy stuff:—Here's a rundown of the stories that you, the reader thought were the best this year. Which means that I think they're the best, too, because as everyone knows—The Customer Is Always Right!

#1: BWAHAHAHA: More Iranian FauxREALtography (79,095 views)
Iran tried to prove to the world how tough it is, but ended up failing. When they tried to cover their tracks in Photoshop, it was quickly spotted by an eagle-eyed LGF reader, but that's not nearly retribution enough, now is it? The Internet, as usual, had a most excellent response to this thugocratic photo-fakery, and I did my best to document it here.
Continue reading »

The disgusting meme that Israel is wantonly striking civilian targets in the Gaza Strip?

As bunk as you would expect it to be. Via the All-Knowing Elder, who truly is all-knowing:

According to a report in Firas Press, quoting the "Conscience Foundation for Human Rights" in the Gaza Strip, so far there have been 368 deaths. Of those, 36 have been children and 9 women.

...

Half of Gazans are 17 or under. The remaining half would in turn be roughly 50% female.

If Israel was indiscriminately firing at Gaza, one would expect 184 children and 92 women to be dead.

For children to be less than 10% of those killed, and adult women roughly 2.5%, indicates a very impressive rate of avoiding civilian casualties. Without knowing how many civilian men have been killed it is hard to know for certain, but these numbers indicate that Israel is doing as much as any nation in wartime has ever done to avoid civilian casualties.

What was the message? That Obama was going to be friendlier to the Muslim nations? He was going to bridge the gap lost by Pres Bush during his war on Islam (they say)?

Didn't they tell us that they believed he would be pro-Muslim and that even his first address would be at a Muslim capital?

Guess he is not the Obama that they thought they knew.

Didn't the press slam Pres Bush for going golfing during some crisis or another?

I guess this is proof that the media DOES treat both sides of the aisle the same.

(Cough, Cough)

Maybe not.

Do we have the Hamas' version to Hezballah's wailing woman?

Even SnappedShot's own Brian got in the mix at the time? Wonder how much fun we can have again?

My good friends over at CAMERA Snapshots (no relation) have run across a very interesting revelation:

"A mother of one of the martyrs stood by the door of the intensive care unit while crying... relatives and those around her were telling her what she should say to the television cameras: 'Say your son [before he died] prayed and went out.' Another tells her: 'Curse the Arab leaders'... The journalists [in the hospitals] are going overboard in their insensitivity and taking advantage of the [difficult] moments, with the explanation that they are showing this to the world. One cameraman told a mourning mother: 'Hit your face, cry, do some action.'"

The wire photographers on the ground are well aware of this manipulation, yet somehow, the politically-correct, Israel-hating editorial desks all the world over can't seem to find the strength to question the constant barrage of similar-sounding remarks like this. Gee, I wonder why?

At least it's refreshing to note that Al-Ayyam has more journalistic integrity than the entire Western media combined.

Once again, it seems that muslims are taking out their vengence on dogs, ever seen as symbols of Western hegemony and decadence.


At least Israel will not take this horrible atrocity laying down this time. However.....

Has anyone heard from PETA on this issue? One would think that a direct assault on dogs through the use of ROCKETS might garner some minor condemnation in the least.

-cheep cheep-

[Update:] If this picture does not pull at your heart-strings and make you angry at the decades-long Palestinian rocket attacks against citizens, then nothing will.

Notice the hasty corrections made to the Star of David on this particular flag:

Palestinians who live in Cyprus, burn a representation of an Israeli flag during a protest against Israel's air strikes in the Gaza Strip, nearthe Israel embassy in Nicosia, Cyprus, Tuesday, Dec. 30, 2008. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)

The guy in the green jacket was overheard saying shortly beforehand: "Hurry up and burn it, Ahmad, before the wire photographer takes the pic..."

For every yin, there is a yang. Or, as Poison (via Bill and Ted) famously pondered, for every rose there is a thorn.

Finally, for every Cheech, there is a Chong.

Except this guy seems to be missing his.

First person to find this guy a Chong in today's wire photo archive wins the Prize du Jour—A pat on the back, virtually!

Caption sent across by Reuters for this photo:

Damage is seen on an Israeli naval ship after it arrived at the port city of Tyre in south Lebanon December 30, 2008. A small boat carrying international activists with aid for Gaza docked in the southern Lebanese port city of Tyre on Tuesday after a clash with an Israeli naval ship forced it to divert to Lebanon. REUTERS/Haidar Hawila (LEBANON)

Moments later, the agency corrects with:

REFILE - CORRECTING THE TYPE OF BOAT A boat damaged by an Israeli naval ship arrives at the port city of Tyre in south Lebanon December 30, 2008. A small boat carrying international activists with aid for Gaza docked in the southern Lebanese port city of Tyre on Tuesday after a clash with an Israeli naval ship forced it to divert to Lebanon. REUTERS/Haidar Hawila (LEBANON)

I offer my advice to the Reuters Middle East desk from yesterday once more—Hopefully, they will listen this time.

Update: I guess it's worth pointing out that this is not the first time that the performance of the Reuters Middle East bureau has been called into question.

One wonders if anyone over at Corporate is paying attention—or if the staff in London think that things there are "good enough" just because the news keeps fitting their preconceived notions of reality?

Update: Welcome, esteemed Society for Professional Journalism Press Notes readers! We may not agree on every last point, but I trust that we all can agree wholeheartedly that accuracy in reporting is paramount. -Ed.

Update again: Wow, that was fast—Apparently, SPJ editors don't make it a practice read the blogs they link ahead of time, as it would seem that they've pulled the link I referenced above. One presumes they've done so because of disagreements with our editorial position—which would be unfortunate.

Ergo, for posterity's sake:



For the record, I stand behind my remark on accuracy above.

Reuters can never seem to restrain itself from saying "Israeli warplanes" every waking moment, yet somehow, in the alternate universe of Tehran, the wire news agency can't seem to spot good old-fashioned warmongering as captured by stringers on the ground:

An Iranian hardliner registers his name as a volunteer to fight against the Israeli troops [Ed.:—In other words, to "make war" on Israel—right?] in Gaza, during a rally in Tehran December 30, 2008. The rally was held to condemn the Israeli attacks on Gaza. REUTERS/Morteza Nikoubazl (IRAN)

One wonders why Reuters sees fit to live by such a double standard?

Would modern Reuters editors have drawn such distinctions back during World War II? Because from where I'm sitting, the parallels are fairly stunning.

Gee, that's funny—There was another historical group that considered genocide of the Jews to be the "final solution" to world peace, too.

One wonders if the irony of this observation was lost on the photo editors over at the Associated Press before they published this picture.

See-Also:

Jihad Watch

From some moonbat's sign in Vienna:

STOP ISRAEL'S
WAR CRIMES
IN GAZA

SONIC BOOMS HOME DEMOLITIONS
torture TARGETED ASSASINATIONS
ILLEGAL DETENTION RESTRICTIONS ON MOVEMENT
STATE TE(rrorism?) (??) RAIDS
U.S. WEAPON(s) (...)RIAN DISASTER

Seriously—If "sonic booms" are considered to be war crimes, you'll have to arrest half of Newark.

Incidentally, I have noticed a slightly different composition to most of the protests on the wires today. Rather than the raging Arab street, we're treated to the "proletariat" of the world, in holy anger at Israel's indignity.

One can read this as the world being united in rage. OR alternately, one can read it as being carefully coordinated by certain shadowy groups that have rather peculiar plans for world governance.

Which do you suppose is more likely?

Update: Helen has some related thoughts that are definitely worth a read!

Update x2: More deep thoughts from the All-knowing Elder, humble servant of the Master of All. In light of that, it's only natural that he's infinitely more eloquent than yours truly.

If I were a wire editor at the Associated Press, I would make it a policy to flag such obvious photo-ops as being fraudulent at face value. It is, after all, the vaunted duty of a modern news agency to bring unbiased facts to the readers, and presenting staged protests like this as being some kind of representation of actual opinion certainly wouldn't seem to count towards that goal.

As an aside, be sure to notice their inferior status, highlighted in bold.

Iranian Jewish school girls and their Muslim teacher attend an anti-Israel demonstration to condemn Israel over air attacks on the Gaza Strip in front of the UN offices in Tehran, on Tuesday Dec. 30, 2008. The children hold up signs calling for 'peace' in English, Hebrew and Persian. (AP Photo/Hasan Sarbakhshian)

The Iranian government offers [Virus warning: Use Chrome on the following links!] three news agencies as representing the official opinion of the Iranian government, so it's not like we actually need the three Western wire services to give us the Iranian point of view.