About those photos of little girls and artillery shells...

[leslie_cheung]

<a href="http://www.cjrdaily.org/behind_the_news/about_those_photos_of_little_g.php"

>About those little girls and artillery shells</a>

[sknowles]

It's the sad reality of what parents tell their kids about the "enemy." If those kids met the

Lebanonese children, would they write the same messages? If they saw the results of the

bombing on the Lebanonese people, would they write any messages? If they understood the

reality, not told by their parents or the news, but from their own experience, would they still

write? Some probably would, but I suspect some would change their mind. Thanks for letting

us know about the interesting photographs.

[kbinner]

i'm constantly amazed at how people consider themselves to be so much different than others based on superficialities like language, skin color, religion. a human has 98%, or so, of their genes in common with a fruit fly. so, how different can a israeli and a arab be? or a black and a white? the fear that leads to hatred is taught.

[working camera]

Politics aside� not to mention that it is probably not that safe to allow your kiddies to play

with live ordinance. Even if the detonators have yet to be set.

 

Gotta love the rational of the Middle East.

 

They are very powerful and sad images.

 

C.

[hong_sien_kwee]

In fact there was a genetic research done a few years ago: the researchers were comparing how close the genetical relationship was between Jews and Arabs (by comparing their DNA using some molecular technique). The conclusion was that their DNA was so close that they could have been one race (apart from the normal point mutations that also occurs among all of us within a race), BUT the Journal that was supposed to publish the article decided not to publish the work as they feared for reprisals from the Jewish community in the US!

 

Hong Sien

[sarahunderhill]

Too bad, these won't be the last, and they are not the first to write things on artillery shells.

[leslie_cheung]

Such cynical post and it's from a female:) BTW You got some lovely photos there Sarah.

[sknowles]

In response to, "Too bad, these won't be the last, and they are not the first to write things on

artillery shells." I'll bet they were writing on stones thrown by catapults, and before that on

stones thrown by hand or slingshot. Nothing new, human nature, only the technology

changes. Some day it would be nice if it were a memory, shown in photographs in history

books or exhibitions of things long past.

[working camera]

Ok the images are sensational from the current perspective of news. Regardless of the

politics and current affairs surrounding them they are powerful very images. Sad images.

And yes I agree, "Any photographer would be out of his mind not to capture this shot." It's

a photojournalist's job to create such imagery. How the respective news bureaus handle

them is another matter entirely.

 

The pics just happen to be of some young Israeli kids, but I guess could have been made

either side of the border. Or a number of other places for that matter. Itﾒs troubling that

this sort of thing occurs anywhere in the world. ATM they are coloured because of events

and the reporting of them but objectively they are still important images and will stand the

test of time. As people's sensibilities subside they will continue to seen as important. Not

because of the immediate regional context but because they portray broader values. Can

you imagine Canadian, Japanese, Australian, Dutch, Norwegian or Kiwi kids etc... being

allowed to write messages on bombs? Something is very wrong here for this sort of thing

to occur. Civil wars are like that, downright callous.

 

To my mind they are just as important as some of the iconic Vietnam War shots.

[nathaniel_pearson]

Hong, I'm not sure where you heard that rumor about withholding publication re. the

genetic affinity of Jews and Arabs. Your report sounds wrong on several fronts (I speak as

a human evolutionary geneticist here). First, 'one race apart' is a meaningless measure of

genetic distance -- there are no discrete, non-arbitrarily defined `races' in human

populations (or in any other populations), and such an assertion would never appear in a

modern peer-reviewed journal. Second, there have already been several papers published

in relevant peer-reviewed journals that do indeed show particularly close genetic affinity

both among Jewish populations, and between Jews and other eastern Mediterranean

populations.

 

Save for your allegation, I've never heard rumor of any such study being delayed or

withheld due to political pressure. Third, it seems to me that the findings in question may

be far more troubling to many Arabs than to many Jews (especially Israelis): among the

former, Israel is widely viewed as a colonial presence foisted on the region by settlers who

ostensibly lacked ancestral roots in the land in question -- a view starkly at odds with the

genetic evidence.

[jonah_skoles]

we constantly see photo's of Palestinians blown up and of Israeli soldiers but why. I have now for years been traveling and have seen many different cultures and there is one thing I know about the Israeliﾒs , they will not show their kids blown up.. now what I want to ask is: as photographers who believe that this war and many other conflict are wrong do we not have a responsibility to help. maybe if we started taking photos of the world that show how much we are alike and the area's in which we do work together we as so called silent observers could change the world by observing something else. beauty can be found every where it is our Job or Reasonability to use it to create not destroy..... just some food for though... love jonah

[beatrice_flowers]

Nathaniel, you may be right on all counts, except he didn't say 'one race apart.' He said 'one race'. Then brackets open to qualify that. 'Apart' as in 'aside from'.

[eugene_scherba]

What's the matter with all the biology here? What's this, early XXth

century? The Middle East problem is cultural and political, not

biological.

[leslie_cheung]

I'm not so much into how closely DNA / genetics matched up among Jews and Arabs though

they do look very strikingly similar to me. BUT why should that matter? As if I find it easier

to kill a black or hispanic than say an asian. Shouldn't we be above this

notion in the 21st century? FWIW my best friend for a long while walked on four legs:P

[leslie_cheung]

oh...didn't see Eugene's post while typing...

[sarahunderhill]

Thank-you Leslie for you nice comment:)

 

Sad to see this, such young people learning to hate....

[nathaniel_pearson]

Bee, thanks for catching my error; sorry for putting words in Hong's mouth there.

 

As to why biology is relevant here: we humans are indeed social (in the ethological

sense) animals. As such, we often resort to group warfare -- conducted mostly by

young males, as is the case for many other social mammals too -- in perceived

territorial struggles.

 

And hey, in fomenting such conflict, we sometimes even stack the deck in perceived

cost/benefit terms, by promising b.s. inclusive fitness benefits, like access to 72

virgins...

[kent_tolley2]

<i>Sad to see this, such young people learning to hate....</i><BR>

Best time to teach them to hate or to love for that matter. <BR> There's a song some would call corny now in South Pacific but it still applies:<BR><BR>

 

You've got to be taught<BR>

To hate and fear,<BR>

You've got to be taught<BR>

From year to year,<BR>

It's got to be drummed<BR>

In your dear little ear<BR>

You've got to be carefully taught.<BR><BR>

 

You've got to be taught to be afraid<BR>

Of people whose eyes are oddly made,<BR>

And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,<BR>

You've got to be carefully taught.<BR><BR>

 

You've got to be taught before it's too late,<BR>

Before you are six or seven or eight,<BR>

To hate all the people your relatives hate,<BR>

You've got to be carefully taught!<BR><BR>

[martin_fuchs2]

thanks for bringing this link to our attention! very interesting...<br><br>

martin<br><br>

<a href="http://www.journalofaphotographer.com" target="_blank">http://www.journalofaphotographer.com</a><br>

<a href="http://www.martinfuchs.com" target="_blank">http://www.martinfuchs.com</a>

[weasel_bar]

Regarding the question of race--while it may be true that physical traits exist on a continuum and that any line drawn must be arbitrary, "race" may still be a valid concept (Nathaniel, not sure if you are saying race doesnt exist). For example, black people have a higher risk of high blood pressure than do whites, and they respond to medication differently. Asians, as a group, get more symptoms when drinking alcohol because they have a deficiency in an enzyme involved in its metabolism. Certainly there are "black" and "asian" people who fall at either end of the spectrum for these traits, but the generalizations are valid.

 

Of course I am not saying that race is a reasonable basis for waging war on another group--just that it exists. Sorry for a post that has nothing to do with photography.

 

By the way, I had a med school professor who said "everybody hates each other because of vitamin D." Lighter skin is better at using sunlight to synthesize vitamin D, and dark skin is more resistant to sunburn and skin cancer. Hence the change in skin color with latitude.

[nathaniel_pearson]

Weasel, this is dangerously off-topic, but let's be clear. Genetic variation, in humans

as well as other organisms, is indeed quantitatively clumped, just as our senses

clearly tell us. But such clumping actually defies any attempt to rigorously,

unambiguously, and non-arbitrarily classify individuals into qualitatively discrete

groups. Concepts like race, and species too, thus have no rigorous definition that

trumps our intuitive (and subjective, meaning inherently subject to disagreement)

classifications of individuals.

 

We biologists may, however, speak rigorously of a 'clade' -- a group consisting of one

individual and all its descendants. But the clade concept is, crucially, scale-

independent -- that is, it doesn't distinguish (or even try to distinguish) a 'kingdom'

from a 'phylum' from an 'order' from a 'species' from a 'race', etc. Moreover, the clade

concept, while useful, is complicated by so-called 'reticulation' (meaning the fusion of

lineages by sex) in sexual breeders like us.

[weasel_bar]

Agreed. Traits are clumped, but drawing boxes around groups of traits to define "race" is inherently arbitrary. Even the concept of "species" can have ambiguity. I just dont want people running around thinking that mankind is one homogenous mass with no traits distinguishing individuals or groups of individuals. President of Harvard had to step down recently for suggesting that men and women might be inherently good at different things--not that that was a reason for one sex to be superior--just that there might be differences. Ok. I'm going to go take some photos.

 

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Weasel, this is dangerously off-topic, but let's be clear. Genetic variation, in humans as well as other organisms, is indeed quantitatively clumped, just as our senses clearly tell us. But such clumping actually defies any attempt to rigorously, unambiguously, and non-arbitrarily classify individuals into qualitatively discrete groups. Concepts like race, and species too, thus have no rigorous definition that trumps our intuitive (and subjective, meaning inherently subject to disagreement) classifications of individuals.

 

We biologists may, however, speak rigorously of a 'clade' -- a group consisting of one individual and all its descendants. But the clade concept is, crucially, scale- independent -- that is, it doesn't distinguish (or even try to distinguish) a 'kingdom' from a 'phylum' from an 'order' from a 'species' from a 'race', etc. Moreover, the clade concept, while useful, is complicated by so-called 'reticulation' (meaning the fusion of lineages by sex) in sexual breeders like us.

[herve_blandin]

what is saddening is the triviality of such images. Kids have never been so co-opted to be warriors and apoligists of nationalism/hatred as in our modern times.

Which, well, corresponds to the ubiquitous and global dissemination of imagery/photography, the result being to replace individual thoughts and need for knowledge, by some general standards of unengaging truths (the generality of it sees to that), easily read and agreed upon by all mankind (ie. "us", westernized/occidentalized denizens). Here, that would be "innocence soiled".

[Allen Herbert]

You've got to be taught before it's too late,

Before you are six or seven or eight,

To hate all the people your relatives hate,

You've got to be carefully taught!

 

Very true,Kent. But on the otherside of the coin if folk are dying all around you from poverty,disease.... it's pretty easy to do a lot of hating,don't you think?

[Allen Herbert]

from a 'race', etc. Moreover, the clade concept, while useful, is complicated by so-called 'reticulation' (meaning the fusion of lineages by sex) in sexual breeders like us.

 

Hmm, what you are really trying to say among all that mumbo jumbo stuff is that we are a greedy lot who look out for ourselves.