Above: The iconic photo from the Paris Charlie Hebdo march, AFTER it had been doctored in Israel to remove all traces of women on it!
Current Events
Look Ima, No Women!
Forget Freedom of Expression -
Jewish Group Denies Women Right To Even Exist On World Stage
JODI RUDOREN, The New York Times
Jerusalem
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany was right there next to the President of France on Sunday, January 11, 2015, marching through the streets of Paris for all the world to see – all the world, that is, except the readers of a Jewish newspaper in Israel.
The newspaper, HaMevaser (The Announcer), altered a front-page photograph of the march to remove Merkel and other female leaders.
Ultra-Orthodox Jewish publications generally avoid pictures of women for purported reasons of modesty, and their intended audience has been known to scratch women’s faces out of bus advertisements and to bar them from running for public office in their parties.
But some people saw the deletions from the Paris photograph as a more serious sin.
“It is rather embarrassing when, at a time that the Western world is rallying against manifestations of religious extremism, our extremists manage to take the stage,” Allison Kaplan Sommer commented on a blog for another Israeli newspaper Haaretz. She berated HaMevaser for “denying the fact that in the wider world, beyond the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, women do stand on the world stage and shape events.”
Apparently deleted along with Merkel were: the Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo; Simonetta Sommaruga, the President of Switzerland; and others.
The altered photo, first pointed out by Walla, an Israeli news site, drew wide scrutiny. Rather than just blur the women’s faces, HaMevaser tried to make it appear as though no women had been there to begin with.
The results were far from seamless: Mediaite called the alterations “sloppy,” citing the discoloration of a man’s face, a disembodied hand, a mysterious glove and an unexplained blur, and posted a comparison with the unaltered original.
An Irish satirical news source, Waterford Whispers, responded by posting its own “feminist newspaper photoshop,” featuring the same Paris street scene with three female leaders depicted, but no men.
Newspapers catering to ultra-Orthodox Jews have been embarrassed before by their handling of news photographs depicting women. In 2011, Di Tzeitung, a Brooklyn-based publication, apologized for digitally altering a photograph to remove Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was then the US Secretary of State, and another woman from a scene in the White House Situation Room.
No one from HaMevaser could be reached Tuesday, including the owner, Meir Porush, a former member of Israel’s Parliament. The newspaper, established in 2009, publishes up to eight pages daily and 20 pages on Fridays, focusing on current affairs.
[Courtesy: The New York Times. Edited for sikhchic.com]
January 16, 2015
Conversation about this article
1: Uddam Singh (London, United Kingdom), January 16, 2015, 11:24 AM.
We human beings, no matter which side of the divide we stand on, never fail to disappoint ourselves. I remember reading on this very site Jonathan Swift's sharp, insightful and accurate assessment of mankind: " ... the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth." This news item brings it home to us that there are no exceptions.
2: Jiwan Singh (Kenya), January 16, 2015, 11:32 AM.
So right you are. Look at them all, ALL scoundrels, each and every one of them: the terrorists who committed the despicable murders, the cartoonists and journalists who seem to have lost all vestiges of basic decency, the millions of lemmings who can't see the forest for the trees as they spill en masse over the cliff of history, and, of course, the very epitomes of hypocrisy, the 50 or so politicians strutting in the parade with not a trace of their well-earned shame showing on their faces ...
3: Irwin Jakes (New York, USA), January 16, 2015, 11:47 AM.
Reminds me of a Columbus Day parade I saw not too long ago in New York, and a bunch of mafiosi godfathers marching down the avenue with the swagger of newly released parolees. When I first saw the picture from Paris, my thoughts immediately shot to the parade in New York, I swear.
4: R Singh (Palo Alto, California, USA), January 17, 2015, 5:46 AM.
A funny article. Points to our own situation where there is a complete absence of women in our gurdwara affairs. Given Guru Nanak's enlightened teachings, what is our excuse?