More on Image Wars

As a follow-up to my previous post, Israel's Image Wars, you may recall that an Israeli radio newscaster mentioned a "picture is in circulation of what looks like the boot of an IDF soldier stamping a young Arab girl, who's lying on the ground. An officer from the special unit in the IDF spokesman's office, who looks at the provenience of these pictures, told Channel 2 TV News, the picture comes from Bahrain and has nothing to do with the Mid East crisis in this region."

Today, I came across this image on Facebook:

Not only does this serve as a critique of the propaganda effort, but it also illustrates how words are at war with images, and rational analysis is pitted against emotional response.  

In an image culture such as ours, the Second Commandment is more relevant that ever before.  It's not that graven images are the only means by which people can be mislead and manipulated, but that our best hope lies in the power of words, and the mindset encouraged by reading and writing that an absence of graven images is meant to open up room for, and encourage:  critical, analytical, reflective.