Tuvia Grossman
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Tuvia Grossman is an American-Israeli who was mistakenly identified as a Palestinian instead of an Israeli in a news photograph published worldwide. The caption implied he was being assaulted by an Israeli policeman although in fact the policeman had been defending him from Palestinian rioters.
Victim of the media war
At the outset of the Al-Aqsa Intifada on September 30, 2000, the New York Times and other media outlets published a photo of a bloodied young man crouching beneath a club-wielding Israeli policeman, based on an Associated Press photo. The caption named him as a Palestinian victim of the recent riots.
The victim's true identity was revealed when Dr. Aaron Grossman of Chicago sent the following letter to the Times:
Regarding your picture on page A5 of the Israeli soldier and the Palestinian on the Temple Mount -- 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, like the one clearly seen behind the Israeli soldier attempting to protect my son from the mob.
The New York Times published a correction identifying Tuvia Grossman as "an American student in Israel" omitting his beating by the Arabs. It also stated that "Mr. Grossman was wounded" in "Jerusalem's Old City". The beating really occurred in the Arab neighborhood of Wadi al Joz.
Due to the reaction of the public and the misleading correction, the New York Times reprinted the picture with a new caption, and an article about his ordeal.
In April 2002, a District Court in Paris ordered the French daily newspaper "Liberation" and the Associated Press to pay 4,500 Euro to Grossman in damages for misrepresenting him.
Abuse of Grossman's picture
Several organisations have used Grossman's picture misleadingly, presenting him as a Palestinian. One of them was an Egyptian government website.
External links
- Grossman's story in his own words (http://www.aish.com/jewishissues/israeldiary/Victim_of_the_Media_War.asp)
- An Honest Reporting article describing the incident (http://www.honestreporting.com/articles/reports/The_Photo_that_Started_it_All.asp)
- The Egyptian government website displaying Grossman's picture in its gallery of "Israeli cruelty" (http://www.sis.gov.eg/online/html2/p31020a.htm)