Mideast States Photoshopping Rivals’ Airplanes Into Ben Gurion

Officials in Riyadh, Cairo, Dubai, and elsewhere went as far as to alter photos of aerial military exercises to show their rivals’ fighters collaborating with the Israel Air Force.

Riyadh, June 27 – Tensions between competing alliances of Arab and Muslim countries intensified again today as each side produced doctored photos purporting to show aircraft of the other side’s state carriers sitting at Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport, in violation of a decades-old boycott of the Jewish State in solidarity with the Palestinian cause.

After images emerged of a Saudi jumbo jet docked at a terminal at the airport outside Tel Aviv, authorities in Riyadh disputed that the plane had traveled there under its own flag, and asserted that the aircraft had been leased to a Portuguese carrier. Within twenty minutes, they also published altered photographs of a jet from Iran Air landing with the Ben Gurion control tower in the background.

Soon Qatari, Iranian, Turkish, and Syrian press offices were sending around clumsy Photoshops of Saudi, Bahraini, Egyptian, and Emirati jets parked next to El Al craft, while officials in Riyadh, Cairo, Dubai, and elsewhere went as far as to alter photos of aerial military exercises to show their rivals’ fighters collaborating with the Israel Air Force.

The Photoshop slanderfest represents a dangerous new escalation in regional tensions, warned an Omani diplomat aiming to ease the situation. “Photoshopping images involving Israel has seldom been aimed at entities other than Israel until now,” observed Nojouss Nonouss. “We are used to seeing Israeli jets superimposed on images of destruction, as part of the propaganda effort on behalf of our suffering brethren in Palestine. But now, that pan-Arab and and pan-Muslim solidarity has broken down, and the visual libel tactic is now being wielded by and against nations that are supposed to be united in opposition to Zionism. Instead they accuse one another of secretly or openly normalizing with the Zionists. It almost seems like a Zionist plot.”

An official in Riyadh agreed with Nonouss’s assessment but interpreted its implications differently. “It is true that the Photoshop offense has been deployed almost exclusively against Israel, but that has not actually changed,” insisted Prince Ayyam Toufaisst of the Ministry of Transport. “Iran, Qatar, and their allies have been colluding with the Zionists to destabilize the region and foment Shiite dominance of historically Sunni areas, so targeting those regimes with Photoshopaganda is the same as targeting Zionists. I don’t see a reason to make a big deal out of our side doing it. The evil is coming from Iran and its sock puppets in the region, and their lies must be stopped.”

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