Did Huffington Post crop AP photo to give Netanyahu devil horns?

Photo of Netanyahu as it appeared on Huffington Post.

The picture of Benjamin Netanyahu shown to the left appears on the front page of today’s Huffington Post, illustrating a story about Israel easing its blockade of Gaza. The full article on Huffington Post, which can be seen here, also uses the same photo as an illustration. (As of this writing, the picture is still on the HuffPo main page, though it may be gone by the time you read this, as the site’s front page changes every day.)

When I first saw the photo, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, because it looks like Netanyahu has neon devil horns growing out of his head. What the hell? Was the photo altered in some way? Or is it a “truth-o-graph” revealing Netanyahu’s true devilish nature?

Turns out: No. The photo is an authentic AP photograph — or at least part of an authentic AP photograph — which was cleverly cropped by someone at Huffington Post to make it appear as if Netanyahu has devil horns — flaming neon devil horns, at that.

The same photo of Netanyahu as it was originally released by AP/AFP.

After a bit of searching, I found the original photograph, which you can see to the left and also here, in its original context on the Yahoo News page. (The picture also currently appears in this Yahoo News slideshow, but again it may not be there by the time you read this, as the slideshows change over time.) At the Yahoo site, the photo is credited to “AFP/Pool/File,” which probably means that one photographer was allowed in to take photos of Netanyahu and the images were then shared in a “pool” by all the news syndicates, including AP and AFP.

As is plainly visible, the original photograph reveals what is really going on: Netanyahu is standing in front of a backlit cut-glass official Seal of the State of Israel, which depicts a menorah flanked on either side by branches.

Somebody — most likely at Huffington Post — carefully cropped off the top portion of the photo so that the bottom parts of the two branches combined with the curved edge of the seal appear to be the outlines of horns sprouting from Netanyahu’s head.

Why?

Is this part of the ongoing and relentless campaign by news sites to subtly slant the news — in this case, to “demonize” (in a literal sense) Israel? Or was it just a sheer random accident?

Or did Huffington Post get the photo from a different source, already pre-cropped? If so, I’d like to see the original source, and investigate who did the cropping. Either way, somebody — either at Huffington Post or at AP (or possibly a different news syndicate) — cropped the photo at the precise point to make Netanyahu look like Satan.

Coincidence? Perhaps. But considering the longstanding documented anti-Israel bias at so many news outlets, “coincidence” seems like the least likely explanation.

For the record, here is a screenshot of the photo as it currently appears on the Huffington Post main page: