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18 hours ago

This photo, the media's misrepresentation of it, and the phenomenal work of organisations such as HonestReporting as a result of this, was one of the turning points for us when it came to advocating for Israel and fighting against media bias. Hard to believe we have all been at this for 20 years.

Of the moment, HonestReporting writes:
Today marks 20 years since Tuvia Grossman, the bloodied "Palestinian," appeared all over the media, leading to the creation of HonestReporting.

On Sep 30, 2000, The New York Times, AP and others published a photo of a bloodied young man seen near a club-wielding Israeli policeman.

The caption read: “An Israeli policeman and a Palestinian on the Temple Mount” and the pose suggested that the Israeli policeman was responsible for the injuries of the “Palestinian” man in the foreground.

In reality, the man was not a Palestinian Arab at all, but a Jewish American yeshiva student named Tuvia Grossman. Grossman had been pulled from a taxi in Jerusalem by an Arab mob and severely beaten. Similarly, the seemingly threatening policeman, a Druze Israeli called Gideon Tzefadi, was actually standing over Grossman and *defending* him from the mob.

Seeing his son's picture in the NYT,, Alan Grossman sent the following letter to the newspaper: “…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.“

In response, the NYT published a half-hearted correction which identified Tuvia Grossman as “an American student in Israel” — not as a Jew who was beaten by Arabs.

Responding to public outrage at the original error and the inadequate correction, the NYT reprinted Tuvia Grossman’s picture — this time with the proper caption — along with a full article detailing his near-lynching at the hands of Palestinians rioters.

The first “correction” also noted that “Mr. Grossman was wounded” in “Jerusalem’s Old City” — although the beating actually occurred in the Arab neighborhood of Wadi al Joz, not in the Old City.

For years after, the media distortion had an ongoing, real-life effect as Arab groups adopted Grossman’s photo in their propaganda campaigns, cynically using a bloodied Jew as a symbol of the Palestinian struggle.

Among others, an official Egyptian government website used the photo on its photo gallery, and the Palestinian Information Center incorporated Grossman’s photo into its homepage banner. ...

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