Trading Shots, Trading Snapshots

THE STRUGGLE OVER SPIN

Every photograph tells the truth. The question is which truth it tells. The story that Shalhevet Pass's final baby picture told was ghastly. After the 10-month-old girl was shot in the head by a Palestinian sniper in the West Bank city of Hebron last week, the Israeli Foreign Ministry disseminated the picture to the media, with her parents' consent and the rationalization of putting a face to Palestinian violence. She lies on her side, her dead eyes half-open, her blackened lips slack. A trickle of blood beneath her head stains her cheerfully patterned sheets. The photo is intimate, scrapbook-like; you do...

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