This picture of Israeli soldiers smiling for a selfie in front of a destroyed Gaza...

[changefromhr]

I know there are lots of pictures. I try to avoid looking as its just so awful but this one couldn't be avoided.

How sickening that the soldiers can smile and act so happy in front of all that destruction.

This is just another picture, from the thousands, that shows how the Palestinians and their lives and homes are seen as worthless.

Have you ever taken yourself a pic next to one of your patients or someone that has just died ? I don’t blame idf for smiling. I blame them for the place they took the picture and many other pictures they’ve taken.

@Lovepeaceunderstanding Your suggestion means Israel is no longer a Jewish state, Jewish people will be a minority and there will inevitably be violence because both groups hate each other and neither seems open to restorative justice.

I didn’t say they were on the rubble. But clearly the rubble (and probably people in between the rubble) is the background of those pictures.

we also know the gymnastics some pro Israel posters tend to do on these boards all to never blame idf / Israel for the things they do. I mean on this thread I was even told yesterday that the rapes on Palestinians aren’t as bad as those in 7-10!

both pictures are taken by the same person on the same day. This can be seen In their ig feed

"I’m not impressed by propaganda, so easy to take a photo and suggest it means something other than it’s reality. That won’t make me forget the young people at a peace concert murdered in cold blood or the babies cooked in ovens." @Lovepeaceunderstanding

How ironic. You were obviously sufficiently impressed by the propaganda of the made up story about the babies cooked in the ovens to still mention it almost 5 months later.

RamblingAroundTheInternet · Today 23:15

It is not open to interpretation, unless you are blinded by bias.
**
Oh the irony @MrsSkylerWhite! Your bias is extremely clear. Didn’t you say the soldiers were standing atop rubble and dead bodies when they’re clearly not. The selfie taker is also not even pointing the camera towards the rubble behind them but at their group. Rubble seems to be weirdly in grayscale not in colour like where the soldiers are standing.

Do you think if your Grandfather had had a mobile phone he might have taken a picture of himself and his fellow soldiers to send back to the extremely worried folks at home to show they were OK? In WW2, families would have had to wait weeks or months just for a letter from loved ones at the front line let alone be able to see them n a picture. Not really comparable with the tech we have today is it?”

i am not biased. I am an atheist, no skin in this whatsoever. I cannot understand conflict based upon religion at all. it’s all a complete nonsense to me because I believe that every human being g is equal and that there should be no borders.

For, presumably, your God’s sake! Pedantry. Standing atop, next to. What for providence sake does it matter? Can you not see the destruction all around them?

Yes, of course he would have taken a photograph. Given the hell on earth he went, and continued forever, to go through, he sure as that hell would not be laughing. There are official films of the First World War, many of them recently restored and coloured. What you will see are lost, desperate looking young men, driven to despair, who just wanted to go home because that war was as futile as this one.

I repeat: Hamas is evil, Netanyahu and a section of his government is evil. There is no differentiation between the loss of Innocents on both sides. There is no bias here, other than against religion, full stop.

No surprise you’ve ignored the point of my last post that you’ve actually even quoted.

Please explain the difference in the level of resolution of the picture you posted of the soldiers up front and the rubble behind?

I wasn’t aware that Israelis have been gang raping Palestinian women and splitting their pelvises before stabbing or shooting them! Cutting off their breasts and inserting nails in their vaginas?

When did this happen?

@ConnieCounter are we divided by pro Palestinians and pro Israelis?
I really hope not because there is no peace on that path. All of those people deserve to live peacefully and democratically. 🙏🏻

Do you think it's a bad as the videos and pictures the whole world has seen of the Hamas scum laughing, smiling and worshipping their invisible friend when they brutalised, raped and murdered on October 7th? Many would say "two wrongs don't make a right", but this is just Western colonialist thinking. In the Middle East, 2 wrongs can most definitely be a right. The versions of "an eye for an eye" are in both of the nonsense story books.

@ConnieCounter , yes I believe that which has been proven to be truthful. The Hamas operatives were utterly barbaric as I suppose is usual for their philosophy. I’m not going to forget their butchery of innocents.

This makes sense. I've spoken to quite a few ex military people with PTSD and have seen that dark humour and / or in the moment detachment is how they cope.
I do think that any "victory" photos are awful in terms of why they were taken, but will prove to be important evidence further down the line as they showed the world what happened.

@MCOut , I hear that. What is your answer?

What’s becoming more and more obvious is that the status quo will not be able to continue indefinitely. So if no one wants to work on a two state solution, I don’t think there is a peaceful one. Personally I think with this use of force Israel is risking its existence.

Israel is more isolated than ever before, the international community is even more critical than before and it wouldn’t surprise me if in the next few decades the world begins to treat it like apartheid SA. Public opinion in the US and elsewhere is shifting and I don’t think US leadership is going to be able to justify the level of aid or support that’s provided to Israel to its next generation of voters. At which point Israel won’t necessarily have the power to insist on a two state solution which I feel it does now. If forced into one state there is just going to be more violence.

I won’t bother with people that minimises rapes and pretends some rapes are worse than others.

I think both are wrong.

This has not been proven to be truthful though.

So all the people butchered on 7/10 were guilty?

Of what?

Stop trying to put words in people's mouths @quantumbutterfly .

No one has said those victims were guilty.

So please testify for these Palestinian women about what happened to them.
I guarantee some rapes are more horrific, some leave you alive or in one piece physically if not mentally.
Rape and torture of a child is even more horrific to our humanity.
So testify.

A rape is a rape.

But that's the modus operandi on these boards isn't it?

So testify.

@RamblingAroundTheInternet do you believe that the photographer has edited the images or used photoshop to edit in a different background?
He's a freelance photographer whose images have been used by many news articles, not just this image but others too. He has a instagram page where he shares his images including the one that is in discussion on this thread.
I can see if you have a different take on it but I don't think it has been manipulated or doctored for the purpose of anti Israel propaganda by the photographer

Look at the difference in resolution showing the clarity of the soldiers and then the rubble behind in the picture you just posted  @EasterIssland. Even the lighting is different.

There is absolutely nothing sinister about that.

Throwing the background out of focus to blur it and thus emphasise the subject(s) of the photograph is a classic manipulation of depth of field and is a technique as old as photography. It even has a name… “bokeh”.

When a scene is out of focus or far away (or both) it tends to become less saturated giving a grey scale effect as seen in the OP’s photograph.

A reminder of the types of denial that are utilised by Israeli propaganda

literal denial (it never happened)

interpretative denial (it’s not what you think it is)

implicatory denial (we have to do it/it’s terrible, but it’s not our fault)

There’s an actual term for this, “hasbara”.