Mideast tensions spill over into Internet photo contest

[Abdur_Rahman]

Mideast tensions spill over into Internet photo contest
March 2, 2001
Web posted at: 7:24 AM EST (1224 GMT)


NEW YORK (AP) -- A photo contest on a news Web site has Israelis and Palestinians squabbling over a picture showing a terrified Palestinian boy huddling behind his father before being killed.

For the first three weeks of MSNBC'S "Year in Pictures 2000" contest, the photo was the clear leader but it slipped to sixth after a widespread e-mail campaign by Israeli supporters who urged people to vote for other photos, The New York Times reported Friday.

"Ever since, the two sides have been trying to influence the position of the photograph," Benjamin L. Billingsley, a spokesman for MSNBC.com, told the newspaper.

Votes have flooded in trying to push the photo of the boy back to the top, but it remained in sixth place early Friday behind five animal pictures.

The boy, Muhammad al-Durrah, 12, was shot to death last September when he and his father got caught in a gun battle between Israeli and Palestinian forces in the Gaza Strip.

The image was taken from video footage shot by a French news crew. Some Palestinian supporters believe that if the photo were to win the most votes, it could bring even more sympathy to their cause.

But supporters of Israel, including the Israeli diplomat in Los Angeles whose e-mail started the debate, do not want the photo to win, thereby attracting more attention.

"To us, this photograph epitomizes everything tragic about the present violence: Children led into the cross fire by their own parents for publicity purposes," Meirav Eilon Shahar's e-mail reads.

In response, Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relation told the Times that no contest is too small when it comes to shaping public opinion concerning tensions in the Middle East.

"It is beyond disgusting what the Israelis are saying about it," Hooper said.

Billingsley called the debate irrelevant to the contest. He said MSNBC's contest has no winner since the contest never ends. Visitors to the site, for example, can still vote for photos from the same contest in 1999.