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Boy's Image Creates Another Cyberwar
WASHINGTON, March 3 (IslamOnline) - The cyberwar between Palestinians and Israelis, and their respective supporters, is continuing unabated, as tensions remain high in the region. This time the battle is being fought in a not so popular corner of the MSNBC website.
MSNBC is currently holding a "Year in Pictures 2000" contest in which visitors can vote for their favorite photo from last year.
For the first three weeks of the contest the picture of the young Palestinian martyr, Muhammad Al Durra, topped the chart. But after a systematic e-mail campaign by Israelis and their supporters, a picture of a dog now tops the list, placing the Al Durra picture in sixth place with 55,000 votes behind the front-runner. Pictures of other animals are voted above Al Durra's picture, entitled, "A Death in Gaza."
Muhammad Al Durra, 12, was martyred by Israeli troops in September as he and his father were caught in between Palestinian protesters and Israeli soldiers. A cameraman from France 2 television captured the dramatic pictures, which were broadcast throughout the world.
This episode in a continuing cyberwar seems to have started when Meirav Eilon Shahar, consul of communications and public affairs at the Israeli consulate in Los Angeles, sent an e-mail to around 20 people calling them to vote for any other photo other than "A Death in Gaza."
His message read, "To us, this photograph epitomizes everything tragic about the present violence: Children led into the crossfire by their own parents for publicity purposes. To much of the rest of the world, thanks to media misinformation and propaganda, it represents something far different." That email was then replicated and forwarded to several thousand other Israeli sympathizers.
A spokesman for MSNBC.com, Benjamin L.Billingsley, told The New York Times that "A Death in Gaza" was way ahead of others when the contest opened on December 15th. He said the photograph's performance until that time was, "organic", something not influenced by outside events. But after January 8th, the internal logs show a sudden surge in votes for other pictures.
"After the campaign began to debunk the photo, another campaign began to bring it back, but it was never able to return to No. 1," he told the paper. "Ever since, the two sides have been trying to influence the position of the photograph."
One example of an e-mail making the current rounds is this one from Salamat, "Salaaam, Plzzz go to this site and vote for Muhammad Al-Dhurra's picture; his picture was winning earlier but the Zionists found out so they started voting for a dog which is in first place; there is even a news article stating that this has become a major internet battle....Plz send this to everyone you may know..."
Some groups from both sides, however, have dismissed this cyber battle as votes in futility.
Mazin Qumsiyeh, treasurer of Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition, said, "For some people this contest might be important, but for me and others on our steering committee, it is a waste of time. How many people actually view MSNBC pictures? There are so many Web sites and I don't know if anybody has not seen that picture already anyway. It is very well known."
Myrna Shinbaum, a spokeswoman for the Anti-Defamation League told the paper, "The Internet has allowed this to take on a life of its own. The whole thing is crazy."
Regardless of which picture gets the highest number of votes, MSNBC itself is a sure winner. More than 502,000 visitors have accessed the site.
Brian Storm, MSNBC.com's director of multimedia, said the dispute "speaks to the power of photography, the power of a single moment that has created a piece of history and to the global voice of the Internet." He compared it to to "a political interest group in the run-up to an election. One e-mail generated this firestorm. ... That's powerful."
MSNBC has now removed wordings that might have suggested that a final "Picture of the Year" would be awarded.
Joan Connell, MSNBC.com executive producer for opinions said, "We wanted to underscore the fact that these ongoing, unscientific surveys were never intended to declare a single outcome, but rather to record reader reaction, minute-by-minute. The results are always changing. We prefer to let the survey speak for itself."
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