Middle East hatred develops into an internet war
Hatred in the Middle East has led to Israelis and Palestinians squabbling over a website photo contest.
The picture shows a terrified Palestinian boy huddling behind his father before being killed.
It was the clear leader for the first three weeks of MSNBC'S Year in Pictures 2000 contest, but slipped to sixth after an e-mail campaign by Israeli supporters who urged people to vote for other photos.
"Ever since, the two sides have been trying to influence the position of the photograph," Benjamin Billingsley, a spokesman for MSNBC.com, told the New York Times.
Votes have flooded in trying to push the photo of the boy back to the top, but it remain sixth behind five animal pictures.
The boy, Muhammad Aldura, 12, was shot to death last September when he and his father were caught in a gun battle between Israeli and Palestinian forces in the Gaza Strip.
"To us, this photograph epitomises everything tragic about the present violence - children led into the cross fire by their own parents for publicity purposes," Meirav Eilon Shahar's e-mail reads.
Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relation told the newspaper no contest is too small when it comes to shaping public opinion concerning tensions in the Middle East.
