Tel-Chai Nation

A most surprising story just came up, of the Hasidic newspaper Der Tzitung, one of these semi-Yiddish language papers in the US, photoshopping Hilary Clinton out of the widely publicized picture of the White House staff watching a video of the raid on bin Laden's hideout, because it's supposedly too sexy just to have a woman in the picture at all (via Doug Powers). This in spite of the fact that Hilary and the female staffer at the back were far from skimpily dressed.

This is fairly common in some Hasidic publications, and in Israel, there's at least 3 papers likely to do that, though the stark difference between them and many Islamists is that Hasidics know why it pays to respect women's rights up front. That said, this photoshopping all for the sake of absurdist modesty notions is definitely foolish, and something that they're going to have to start considering a change for.

In fact, as Rabbi Jason Miller at the Jewish Week says:

Der Tzitung edited Hillary Clinton out of the photo, thereby changing history. To my mind, this act of censorship is actually a violation of the Jewish legal principle of g'neivat da'at (deceit). I wrote about this subject a year ago following the Flotilla debacle in Israeli waters outside Gaza when the Reuters news agency doctored photos that it published by removing weapons from individuals aboard the Mavi Marmara. The doctoring of photographs like this is referred to as "Fauxtograpphing." I'm curious to hear how Der Tzitung responds to its attempt to remove Hillary Clinton from this iconic photo and thereby from this historic event.

Much as I can't stand Hilary any more than the next person with common sense, I must concur that this is ridiculous to think that a woman's presence in a picture like this constitutes any kind of moral wrong. I honestly do think a change is going to be needed in the beliefs as conducted by the rabbinical board in charge of papers like these. To their credit, Der Tzitung's editorial did apologize for the alterations. Maybe this could encourage a much needed discussion of how to better the beliefs and conduct on what the Hasidic community considers ideal for how to run press outlets like these.

With that told, maybe now we can turn our attention back to whether Islamic-dominated press outlets do any censorship like this, and I wouldn't be surprised if they do, only worse. With them, I'd think it's even more concerning.

Update: The New York Daily News quotes Rabbi Shmuley Boteach saying:

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, a New York City radio show host and best-selling author, called the photo treatment "absolutely unusual."

"I have no idea why they did it, but what I can say is that there is nothing in Judaism that prevents the publication of images of women in power," he said. "On the contrary women in positions of power pervade our community."

Something to think about.

Labels: communications, Israel, United States