A reader writes:
I've been casually reading your blog for about a year now, and while I think I understand your motivations behind posting the horrifying pictures of dead children in the most current Israeli-[insert enemy] conflict, it is too just too painful and depressing to view. Obviously shocking photos bring the issue (war=dead children) straight to the forefront in a way that perhaps television (if they had any cojones), print and radio cannot. We Americans do not know the tiniest molecule of terror that children live and die with in Gaza.
But as a mother of young children and a human being, I cannot bear to see those pictures. The child's bloody feet at the morgue were almost overwhelming, and while I only caught a glimpse of what looked like a head in rubble, it feels seared in my brain and I can't seem to scrub it off. My first reaction was to remove your blog from my RSS feed, but I don't want to miss your opinions and messages, just the shocking photos of dead humans. Perhaps you might provide more warning for us softies in the future?
Point taken. My policy is to air as much of the truth as I can. And one of the benefits of being a blogger is the ability to raise issues and publish images that the MSM won't. I published the Danish cartoons and the beheading of Nick Berg. I have posted countless victims of Jihadism and Islamist sectarianism and the falling bodies of 9/11 victims. And it seems to me that the moral issues involved in thinking through the Gaza blockade and invasion was helped, not hurt, by facing the photographic reality that is sometimes kept from MSM readers. My apologies if you were offended. I'll think about warnings before particularly graphic shots in future.