Haredi Newspaper Photoshops Hillary Clinton Out Of Iconic White House Bin Laden Mission Photo

BEFORE

AFTER

A Yiddish Haredi Brooklyn newspaper, Der Zeitung, has printed a revisionist version of the iconic photo of the White House staff watching a live telecast of the assault on Osama Bin Laden's hideout in Pakistan by removing Hillary Clinton and a female staffer from the picture.

Reporting in today's Jerusalem Post, Jordana Horn writes:

The photograph showing President Barack Obama and staffers in the White House Situation Room carefully watching the raid in progress by US forces in Pakistan on the bin Laden compound last Sunday has been published far and wide.

One Hassidic paper in Brooklyn, however, has chosen to alter the photo – excising Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and another female staffer from the picture.

First reported in the blog failedmessiah.typepad.com, the photoshopped picture was published in the Yiddish newspaper Der Zeitung (The Time) on Friday, with empty spaces where Clinton had been sitting and where the female staffer had stood.

While Der Zeitung had no comment as to why it altered the picture, many conjectured that it was either because of concerns about immodesty, or strong feelings that women should not be in positions of power.

“This is a bit silly,” one commentator wrote at failedmessiah. “Secretary of State Clinton was not dressed immodestly. There was no intent of objectification in the photo. Haven’t the editors got something better to do?”

This isn't the first instance of  Haredis eliminating photos of women from public display. In October 2009 we posted a story about how a Haredi news blog airbrushed the face of model Bar Refaeli from a clothing billboard in B'nei B'rak. And she wasn't wearing immodest clothing, either.