Media Deception

Makes you think? What do you see here?

It is common knowledge that a picture says more than 1,000 words - but does it always tell the truth? Not always.

This AP (Associated Press) photograph was published by the New York Times and the Boston Globe, purportedly to illustrate the beating of a Palestinian by an Israeli policeman. The story that the picture seems to tell is that of a brutal policeman wielding a baton, standing above the cowering, bloodied Palestinian.

The truth is in fact very different. The "Palestinian" is really an American Jewish student from Chicago, Tuvia Grossman, who, together with two of his friends, was pulled from a taxi by a Palestinian mob and brutally beaten and stabbed. The "brutal Israeli policeman" is in fact protecting them from the mob.

It is worthwhile keeping this lesson in mind.

Read Tuvia Grossman's, first-person account of his ordeal, entitled Victim of the Media War.

Here is a letter from Aaron Grossman to New-York Times editor:

Regarding your picture on page A5 (Sept. 30) of the Israeli soldier and the Palestinian on the Temple Mount - that Palestinian is actually my son , Tuvia Grossman, a Jewish student from Chicago. He, and two of his friends, were pulled from their taxicab while traveling in Jerusalem, by a mob of Palestinian Arabs and were severely beaten and stabbed.

That picture could not have been taken on the Temple Mount because there are no gas stations on the Temple Mount and certainly none with Hebrew lettering, like the one clearly seen behind the Israeli soldier attempting to protect my son from the mob.

Aaron Grossman, M.D.

Here are two clearer pictures of the event.