I wonder if there’s a snowball’s chance in hell of this photo making it into the mainstream media news.
By the way, the background behind it reveals something else you won’t hear about in the mainstream media:
Five years ago, after a massive snowstorm, the IDF chief of staff got into a snowball fight with a Palestinian family on the side of a West Bank highway.
I was then the chief of staff’s photographer and, as was my duty, I caught on film the improbable encounter. But the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit refused to allow the picture to be printed, saying it would only be released to the public “when there’s a peace agreement.”
Now, however, the chief of staff in question, Benny Gantz, has entered politics and is campaigning for the premiership, and — peace be damned — the Israel Defense Forces has decided the photograph can be published.
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In December 2013, a heavy snowstorm knocked out electrical lines and caused damage across the West Bank. So Gantz, flanked by his staff, went to see the damage and what the army could do to help. Nachum Barnea, Yedioth Aharonoth’s senior columnist, was along for the ride as part of an article he was writing about Gantz’s final year as IDF chief.
As we were driving down a snow-packed road, the chief of staff spotted a group of three Palestinians — a husband, a wife and their grown daughter — playing in the snow. He called for the entire line of cars to pull over so that he could speak with them.
Through a translator, the husband explained that they were heading to Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem so his wife could get cancer treatment. Along the way, they had decided to stop and have some fun.
