More Staged Photos?

Yesterday I quipped that I found Gatorade's new energy Drink "self-Propel," after discovering a series of three pictures by Reuters photographer Zohra Bensemra. In those photos, a mysteriously mobile bottle of water appears and disappears beside an elderly injured woman that Bensemra said was waiting to be rescued, and was made to appear utterly alone.

The moving bottle and other suspicious elements in the photos lead me to believe that this series of photos, like so many already discovered coming from Arab Muslim stringers in Lebanon, were quite likely staged.

The curious composition of Bensemra's photos continued today, as this one was, err, unearthed in Yahoo's Photostream:

I have no doubt at all that Lebanese Red Cross members are unearthing bodies from the rubble of Israeli air strikes, and will continue to do so for days weeks, and even months to come. But the damaged structure in question would seems to offer a very narrow opening, and with two rescuers already inside the cramped space (you can see the reflective stripes on the sleeve of another rescuer further in), it would seem strange to bag a body in the narrow confines of unstable rubble, when it would be both safer and easier for the rescuers to do so in the open.

Of course that is making the assumption that this is indeed a cramped space.

Another photo, which I have enlarged and then cropped to show the relevant area, indicates that the external area of the structure in question is only several yards wide, and no more than a couple of yards high. Note the expansive open area in the left side of the frame, and edge of the structure over the shoulder of the second man from the right. This structure these men were emerging from is far too narrow to be a residential building. It seems doubtful that a normal residential dwelling would have such a narrow profile, a concrete roof, walls a foot or more thick, or space for two or more live adults to body bag the undefined deceased inside, before bringing him out.

Victim or target? House, or bunker? Perhaps the Israelis were able to kill someone other than old women and children after all.

I cannot prove that Zohra Bensemra is complicit in staging photos in Lebanon, but at the very least I can feel comfortable of accusing Bensemra of writing misleading captions that alter the context of how the picture is viewed. A caption reading "Lebanese Red Cross personnel remove the body of a person who died during an Israeli air raid during the conflict between Israel and Lebanon's Hizbollah, at Tayba in south Lebanon August 15, 2006" may be entirely accurate, but a caption reading "The body of a Hezbollah fighter is removed from a bunker near Tayba" would tell quite a different story, if htat is indeed what happened.

Is Reuters photographer Zohra Bensemra a journalist, or propagandist? I'll leave that for you to decide, Myself, I tend to judge people by the company they choose to keep.

Cross-posted at Confederate Yankee.