Paul Hansen's image of a funeral procession in a Gazan alleyway on Nov. 20, 2012 is undeniably striking. Two men, their faces warped with grief and anger, carry the shrouded bodies of their young nieces, killed in an Israeli missile strike, while a crowd of men follow behind them. When it was selected as the winner of the 2013 World Press Photo contest in February, the chairman of the contest jury, Associated Press Vice President and Director of Photography Santiago Lyon, praised the photograph's "incredible collection of powerful motifs of imagery, that when it all comes together makes for a really strong photograph."

But was it real? And what does that mean at a time when photo software can aid in collecting the very motifs that made the image so remarkable?

On Monday, British tech writer Sebastian Anthony claimed on the blog ExtremeTech that the photograph isn't really a photo at all; according to image analyst Neal Krawetz, it's three photos that were enhanced and stitched together using Photoshop. The proof is in the code, Krawetz argues, which contains a record of the composition. Applying other filters and tools to the image, he writes, shows evidence of additional manipulation including image sharpening and brightening. "Basically," Anthony argues, "Hansen took a series of photos -- and then later, realizing that his most dramatically situated photo was too dark and shadowy, decided to splice a bunch of images together and apply a liberal amount of dodging (brightening) to the shadowy regions."

Hansen, for his part, told news.com.au today that the allegations just aren't true. "In the post-process toning and balancing of the uneven light in the alleyway, I developed the raw file with different density to use the natural light instead of dodging and burning," the Swedish photographer explained. "In effect to recreate what the eye sees and get a larger dynamic range."

As I understand it, Hansen is arguing that his mild image manipulation is the digital equivalent of under- or over-developing select portions of the image in a darkroom. No fancy bells and whistles -- and definitely no composites of other photos. And as news.com.au points out, this seems to be acceptable according to the somewhat ambiguous rules for the World Press Photo contest, which states that the "content of the image must not be altered. Only retouching which conforms to the currently accepted standards in the industry is allowed."

At the end of the day, an image from the November conflict between Hamas and Israel was bound to create controversy. The meaning of another photograph from that bout of violence -- depicting BBC World journalist Jihad Mashrawi holding his dead son in a hospital -- has also been subject to revisions. Initial reports claimed the child was killed by an Israeli attack, while a U.N. investigation found that the death owed to an errant rocket fired by Hamas.

Image manipulation is becoming more and more common in news photography, but many media organizations maintain certain journalistic standards for the pictures they use. Krawetz argues that Hansen's image violates "the acceptable journalism standards used by Reuters, Associated Press, Getty Images, National Press Photographer's Association, and other media outlets." Anthony, however, doesn't seem so certain:

The bigger discussion, of course, is whether Gaza Burial is actually fake -- or just enhanced to bring out important details. This is a question that has plagued photography since its inception. Should a photo, especially a press photo, be purely objective? Most people think the answer is an obvious 'yes,' but it's not quite that simple.... Is it okay for a photographer to modify a picture so that it looks exactly how he remembers the scene?

For what it's worth, the qualities that Lyon, the jury chairman, cited for the award are fundamental to the photograph:

This photo was chosen because it is so powerful.... The combination of the small size of the bodies -- they're very young children -- combined with the variety of expressions of pain and rage and sadness.... This image sums up the story very powerfully, very poignantly.

On Tuesday, World Press Photo told the Huffington Post that two independent experts will be carrying out a forensic investigation of the image file with Hansen's cooperation, and later informed Poynter that it had found "no evidence of significant photo manipulation or compositing." 

Ultimately, Hansen may have edited the picture to emphasize the features that the judges cited in deeming his image the best photo of the year. But what Lyon described in announcing the award goes far beyond lighting in a dark alley.

In a country where land is such a precious commodity, you might think that suddenly having more acreage would be a blessing. Instead, it's sparked yet another political fight.

As it has for decades, the water level of the Dead Sea is dropping at a rate of more than three feet a year -- largely as a result of dams built in Israel, Jordan, and Syria, and water subsidies that make agricultural irrigation cheap and wasteful. This, in turn, has caused the shoreline to recede and exposed 35,000 acres of new, unclaimed land.

Today, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that, after two years of legal battles, the Israeli Civil Adminstration has decided that the new coastline is state land. The decision comes despite the claims of neighboring Palestinian communities that their holdings previously extended to the waterline, and that the newly exposed land should therefore be theirs as well. According to the Haaretz report, the Civil Administration could not verify these claims.

Shoreline property is a particularly valuable resource on the Dead Sea. Resorts built on beachfront property 20 years ago now have to shuttle tourists to the water's edge. The sea's southern portion is hydraulically engineered and entirely artificial -- pumps transport water from the north into "evaporation pools" in the south for the production of potash and other cosmetic products that capitalize on the sea's supposed healing properties.

The Haaretz article notes that the Israeli government will use the land for tourism projects, but whether the territory can sustain development is uncertain; the exposed land is pockmarked by large sinkholes where now-dry aquifers have collapsed, and the runoff that does make it to the Dead Sea is polluted by sewage. The new land may be more trouble than it is worth, but that's not likely to defuse the fight over who controls it.

On Monday, the Israeli government launched a new bus service to shuttle Palestinian day laborers from the West Bank town of Qalqiliya to Israeli cities where they are employed. Ynet outlined the reasons behind the two new lines, which have only been advertised to Palestinians in Arabic:

A ministry source said that many complaints expressed concern that the Palestinian passengers may pose a security risk, while other complaints said that the overcrowded buses cause the drivers to skip stations.

The development has caused an uproar both in Israel and internationally, prompting comparisons to apartheid in South Africa and the United States' own checkered transportation history. In an op-ed for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Aeyal Gross compared the new bus service to the 1896 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Plessy vs. Ferguson, which deemed segregation legal in cases where it is "separate but equal." Striking a similar note, Al Jazeera went with the headline, "Israel launches segregated bus service."

The Israeli Transport Ministry, meanwhile, has defended the move as pragmatic rather than discriminatory -- a way of accommodating the growing number of Palestinians who are receiving permission to work in Israel.

Lofty analysis aside, surprisingly little attention has been paid to how the change is actually playing out on the ground. The Palestinian newspaper al-Quds described the first day of the new bus service as stressful and chaotic, with too few buses to accommodate the many Palestinian laborers trying to get across the border. Palestinians who gave up on trying to board the overcrowded buses and instead chose to cross the border on foot were refused entry.

Still, like their Israeli counterparts, Palestinians primarily voiced pragmatic rather than moral concerns about the new service. One man told al-Quds that the new lines mean he has to wake up two hours earlier and get home later each day. Another lamented that he doesn't understand "why [the Israelis] had to go and make this headache." Haaretz also reported from the scene:

One man working on the Meier-on-Rothschild luxury tower asked why the Tel Aviv bus stopped at the northern train station and did not continue on to the Central Bus Station. A group of workers looking to get to Herzliya asked why the Ra'anana-Kfar Sava line wasn't extended to Herzliya. Many wondered about the buses' return times.

As far as we can tell, there was no mention of Plessy vs. Ferguson.

During last year's GOP primary, candidate Newt Gingrich boldly asserted that Palestinian schoolchildren "have textbooks that say, ‘If there are 13 Jews and nine Jews are killed, how many Jews are left?'"

Could the situation really be that bad? And what about the other side? How are Palestinians portrayed in books used by Israeli children?

A recently published study, sponsored by the US Department of State attempted to answer these questions. This three year study, the largest ever done on the topic, examines "depictions of the other" in Palestinian Authority, Israeli State, and Israeli Ultra-Orthodox textbooks. To the surprise of many, the contents were really not that bad, considering the amount of built-up resentment both sides have to work with.

As Bruce Wexler of Yale University, one of the study's leading authors, said during a briefing at the National Press Club on February 6, the first US discussion of the project:

The big picture is not that there are these made up things about the other. There are, unfortunately, plenty of true things about the other that do the service of portraying them as negative without making any false statements.

Of course, there were a few egregious examples. A passage from an Ultra-Orthodox, "Israeli Studies" textbook for 2nd graders reads:

A convoy of bloodthirsty Arabs marched to that settlement, the purpose was clearly to loot the property of the Jew and burn down their houses.

And a Palestinian Islamic Studies book for 6^th graders asks students to complete the following exercise:

Through studying history and experiencing the events and reality in which we live:

A - Mention some violent events against our people by the enemies.
B - How do enemies and occupiers deal with the people of occupied countries?
C - How did the Muslims deal with the people of conquered countries?"

Israeli state textbooks came out the most favorably, with 49 percent of their depictions of "the other" being negative, compared to 73 percent in ultra-Orthodox books and 84 percent in Palestinian books. But this did not stop the Israeli government from lashing out at the writers before the report was even published. In a press release, the Israeli Ministry of Education skeptically questioned the authenticity of the "study":

An examination of professionals within the Ministry of Education and outside it of the materials prepared by the bodies that "conducted the research," clearly reveals that it is biased, unprofessional and significantly lacking in objectivity.

Ironically, the report also found Israeli state textbooks to be the most comfortable with self-criticism.

Conventional wisdom for women and men choosing a perfume or cologne generally holds that one should avoid making a strong statement with a scent. Let someone else's perfume sensually assault everyone else in the boardroom.

Not so, apparently, in Gaza, where a local company's newest fragrance is called M-75, named after the long-range rockets Hamas designed and fired on Tel Aviv and Jerusalem last month.

Marketed to both women and men (there are two different scents and his and hers bottles), the fragrance is meant to be a symbol of Palestinian resistance and a celebration that M-75 rockets were able to reach their targets during the eight day "Operation Pillar of Defense" in November.

According to the owner of the company, Shadi Adwan, "The fragrance is pleasant and attractive, like the missiles of the Palestinian resistance, and especially the M-75." Its goal? "To remind citizens of the victory wherever they may be, even in China."

The success of this political beauty statement has yet to be determined. M-75 costs twice as much as other perfumes in Gaza, due to its "luxurious" ingredients. Let's hope this doesn't lead to retaliation. No one wants to know what "Pillar of Defense" smells like.

Throughout this year's presidential election, as talk of a possible Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities has grown louder, there has been rampant speculation about whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu favors Barack Obama or Mitt Romney, and how that preference could influence the timing of a strike. Reports of a longstanding friendship between Netanyahu and Romney only fueled the debate, especially since Netanyahu and Obama reportedly have a chilly personal relationship.

In a national security address on Thursday evening -- a day after Democratic leaders added language on Jerusalem to their platform in the face of intense criticism -- Senator John Kerry (D-MA) suggested that, in fact, Netanyahu is on Obama's side:

Barack Obama promised always to stand with Israel to tighten sanctions on Iran -- and take nothing off the table.

Again and again, the other side has lied about where this president stands and what this president has done. But Prime Minister Netanyahu set the record straight -- he said, our two countries have "exactly the same policy," "our security cooperation is unprecedented." When it comes to Israel, I'll take the word of Israel's prime minister over Mitt Romney any day.

Kerry, who was referring to comments Netanyahu made in speeches to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in 2011 and 2012, wasn't the only speaker at the Democratic convention to quote Netanyahu as an unwitting surrogate. Here's what former Florida Congressman Robert Wexler had to say on Tuesday evening:

Last week, Mitt Romney claimed that the president has thrown Israel "under the bus."

Perhaps Mr. Romney should listen to those who know best -- Israel's leaders.

Listen to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has thanked president Obama for "unprecedented" security cooperation and for wearing his support for the Jewish state as a "badge of honor."

Republicans have used Netanyahu's words to their advantage too. When Romney visited Israel as part of a foreign tour over the summer, the Israeli prime minister told the candidate that he agreed with his assessment of the Iranian threat. The "sanctions and diplomacy so far have not set back the Iranian program by one iota," Netanyahu observed. The Romney campaign quickly emailed out news coverage of the meeting. 

Netanyahu, for his part, has avoided jumping into the fray -- at least explicitly. In July, ahead of Romney's trip to Israel, he told CBS's Bob Schieffer that he would treat the Republican candidate like he treated candidate Obama when he visited Israel in 2008. When Schieffer asked whether he would be as comfortable with a President Romney as he was with a President Obama, Netanyahu teased him for asking the question. "You're far too experienced a reporter," he said. In another interview with Fox News, he chided Chris Wallace for asking the same question, saying "you're far too wise a journalist to think that I'm going to get into your field of American politics."

I would call the prime minister's office and ask if Kerry's speech tonight has, at long last, inspired Netanyahu to issue an endorsement. But I'm far too wise a journalist. 

Now that the United Nations has run out of funding for children's summer camps in Gaza, Palestinian kids in the Strip have one alternative for entertainment during the summer months -- Hamas camp.

The U.N.'s Relief and Works agency had provided summer camps each year for over 250,000 children in Gaza, but at an annual cost of $12 million dollars, the agency said that there simply wasn't enough funding for summer games when people in Gaza still need food.

Gaza's governing body Hamas, on the other hand, runs several summer camps throughout the territory, which saw an enrollment of about 70,000 boys and 50,000 girls this year. Activities at Hamas camps include soccer, shooting and horseback riding for boys and baking and sewing for girls (According to one Hamas camp counselor, "girls don't like sports"). Both genders are taught and quizzed in Islamic doctrine.

Much more controversial are reports of political indoctrination and paramilitary training in the Hamas camp. In what appears to be a recruiting effort, a Hamas camp for boys 14 and older has campers scaling chain link fences, crossing water with their arms above their heads, and racing across monkey bars (check out the slideshow of these drills on Mother Jones).

A Hamas camp counselor told the AP, ‘‘Our camps are about education and play, but we can't divorce children from their surroundings.'' (The experience makes for an interesting comparison with the Israeli counterterrorism camp in Gush Etzion in which visitors can shoot virtual terrorists.)

Israeli online newspaper Ynet News reported that this year's theme at one of the Hamas summer camps is "the suffering of Palestinian prisoners." According to the article, children are led on tours of mock Israeli interrogation cells and torture chambers, and are taught to walk on rusty nails.

Energy resources are a hot commodity in the Levant Basin days, and with 1.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil, 122 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas, and 5 billion barrels of natural gas liquids at stake, the Israeli defense ministry is asking for a "one-time budget increase" of about $760 million to boost its naval capacity in the Mediterranean Sea so it can better protect the country's offshore natural gas platforms. Though Israel purchased its fourth Dolphin-class diesel-electric submarine from Germany earlier this year to the tune of over $500 million, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Israel Defense Forces chief of staff Benny Gantz are on board with the plan, which "calls for adding four new warships to Israel's naval fleet and deploying hundreds of soldiers in the area."

Natural gas discoveries in the early twenty-first century have created a military debacle for Israel, which does not have demarcated maritime boundary with Lebanon.  All of the multinational gas platforms are privately owned and fall within Israel's exclusive economic zone of 200 nautical miles from the coast, but they are located beyond Israel's territorial waters, which only stretch 12 nautical miles from land.  

Israel's first offshore natural gas discovery, Tamar, is not slated to come online until 2013, but the defense institution fears that the platforms are already targets for terrorist attacks from Hezbollah, which receives long-range missiles from Syria. The Israeli navy does not traditionally get the lion's share of the defense budget, and top officials are worrying. As one anonymous senior Israeli military planner told Reuters, "We will do our best, but not without a major boost to our capabilities." In May, senior naval officer Capt. Sassi Hodeda told the Los Angeles Times that the navy wants to improve its radar systems and use unmanned surface vehicles to patrol, but added that they require "special technology" the navy does not have.

If the navy does receive the extra funding, the vessels it purchases "will have to accommodate an advanced radar system, a helicopter and a launch system capable of firing long-range air defense and surface-to-surface missiles." According to the Jerusalem Post, the options include designing the ships in the U.S. using foreign military aid, and building them in South Korea, but if Israel is really looking for international help, maybe it should consider ratifying the Law of the Sea Treaty first.

Have you ever wondered what it's like to be a terrorist-shooting sniper? Thanks to a program run by Jewish settlers in Gush Etzion, you too can spend a day beyond the Green Line learning how to take down extremist militants. As Yedioth Aharanoth reported recently, the experience allows tourists to "hear stories from the battleground, watch a simulated assassination of terrorists by guards, and fire weapons at the range." Sharon Gat, who manages the Caliber 3 shooting range, calls the opportunity a "once-in-a-lifetime experience" that was "created due to popular demand," and demand is certainly high among families. Enter Michel Brown, a Miami banker who brought his wife and three children to this warfare summer camp:

Upon entering the range, his five-year-old daughter, Tamara, bursts into tears. A half hour later, she is holding a gun and shooting clay bullets like a pro. "This is part of their education," Michel says as he proudly watches his daughter. "They should know where they come from and also feel some action."

By the end of the day, his trigger-happy son Jacob is confident that he can stop terrorist operatives with the best of them:

"This is an awesome experience. I learned how to stop a terrorist and how to rescue hostages. Now, when I find myself in distress, I will know how to deal."

Tourists receive a certificate at the end of the experience, and Gush Etzion Regional Council president Davidi Pearl hopes that the program will turn the Gush into "a world-famous ‘tourist gem.'"

If the program continues to be successful, we may have a small army of child counter-terror operatives on our hands.

Peace between Israelis and Palestinians depends on coordinated unilateral actions, not negotiations, former Shin Bet chief Ami Ayalon explained during a panel discussion at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars on Thursday. Ayalon, who also served as a member of Knesset for the Labor Party, said that "the idea of negotiations does not exist anymore."

Ayalon presented his own plan for a two-state solution, authored by Blue White Future, a non-partisan political movement he founded. The plan, based on the Clinton Parameters, first calls for Israel to negotiate with the Palestinians based on the 1967 lines and a territorial swap, should the Palestinians decide to come to the table. Second, it insists on the security fence as a provisional line and states that annexing the eastern side of the fence is not in Israel's interest. Third, the plan calls for the Knesset to pass a law enabling those settlers living on the eastern side of the fence to return to the western side, should they wish to do so. Fourth, it states that the Knesset should create a strategic plan to bring back all 100,00 settlers so as not to repeat the mistakes of the Gaza Strip pullout. Fifth, it demands that the Israeli Defense Forces remain on the eastern side of the fence to prevent any security risks. Finally, the plan requires that the Knesset pass a law that any agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians be put to a national referendum.

Robert Malley, who served as special assistant to President Clinton on Arab-Israeli Affairs, agreed that the concept of unilateralism is profound, compared to prospects for future negotiations, particularly the plan of the Quartet:

"I can't remember the last conversation I've had with a an official member from the Quartet ... who genuinely believed what they were mouthing everyday.... They don't believe it and the argument that they give for maintaining the fiction is that if you discard the fiction then you're going to leave people in a state of hopelessness and create a vacuum that bad things will fill."

Wilson Center fellow and Foreign Policy columnist Aaron David Miller, who moderated the panel, cautiously praised the plan:

"What Ami is offering is logical, it's credible. I like it because it's unanchored and unmoored to an American role in this negotiation right now or for the foreseeable future, and I also like it because it's self-directed.... Whether it will work or not is another matter."

Ayalon, meanwhile, is also putting his faith in the Israeli government:

" We understand for the time ... he cannot blame his coalition today. His coalition.... I know that in this Kensset and in this coalition, this program, this paradigm, is acceptable."

Netanyahu may have just assembled a coalition of 94 out of 120 Knesset members, a considerable mandate, but there's no guarantee that the coalition will stay intact. If history has anything to say about Israeli unity governments, nothing is ever for certain.

Although the Arab Spring hasn't won Israel many friends in the Middle East, Haaretz reported yesterday that its navy "recently strengthened its cooperation with the Lebanese Navy in the Mediterranean." The partnership, Israel hopes, will prevent provocations in the form of possible pro-Palestinian flotillas to Gaza on May 15, or Nakba Day, which commemorates "the displacement of Palestinians following the establishment of Israel in 1948, and on Naksa Day, which takes place in June and commemorates the displacement of Palestinians after the 1967 war."

It's no surprise that Israel would turn to regional multilateralism in order to avoid a repeat of the Gaza flotilla incident of 2010. According to the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, "pro-Palestinian activists from Sweden [have] announced their intent to organize another Gaza flotilla this year, saying they have already bought the ship."

Whether this friendly strategic cooperation will last, though, is an entirely different question. Israel and Lebanon may soon be engaged in nasty disputes over natural gas fields in the Levant Basin, which as Robin M. Mills reported for FP last year "spans not only Israel's offshore but also that of Lebanon, Cyprus, and Syria." In 2009, U.S. exploration company Noble Energy found Tamar, a deepwater field that holds 8.5 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of natural gas. Noble discovered Leviathan, which has an aerial area of 125 square miles and contains a potential 20 Tcf, in early 2010. As Mills noted, the U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the entire basin "could contain 120 Tcf of gas, equivalent to almost half of U.S. reserves."

With Tamar set to come online in April 2013, and Leviathan expected to begin production by 2016, what is for now just a dispute over maritime borders could soon turn into a regional conflict over natural gas.

J Street, the "political home" for pro-Israel, pro-two state solution (read: anti-AIPAC) American Jews, kicked off its third annual conference in Washington on Saturday night. But despite its massive efforts to mobilize behind President Obama, executive director Jeremy Ben-Ami doesn't seem to be terribly satisfied with the commander in chief's track record in a press roundtable:

"We would like to see the president do more, we'd like to see the administration take a more proactive role in outlining the parameters for a resolution of the conflict, and to build an international coalition of supporters beyond the Quartet."

Ben-Ami also invoked Libya and Iran as examples for the White House to follow as it builds consensus for a two-state solution.

"The way the world was brought together around Libya and around the Iran sanctions, that's the kind of mobilization of international support that the administration will need to do if it wants to re-establish American credibility in foreign policy making."

A panel discussion held during the conference on Sunday about the current prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace took on a bleaker tone. According to Lara Friedman, director of policy and government relations for Americans for Peace Now, the current administration is simply exhausted:

"They were serious, but realized that they didn't have the political stomach...They thought they had the will to see it through, but they got exhausted."

Nadav Eyal of Israel's Maariv newspaper added that the president does not appear to be invested in the issue:

"Obama needs to come into this personally, and he has not done that."

Leila Hilal, co-director of the New America Foundation's Middle East Task Force, even questioned the viability of the two-state solution itself:

"This is the time to think about new strategies. Two states is a largely hollow and abstract notion, and the Palestinian public has no interest in dead-end talks...Conditions are not ripe, and the U.S. administration cannot force proposals."

For an organization that's supposed to rally support for a peaceful two-state solution, this year's attendees seem fairly pessimistic about the chances of achieving that goal. Ben-Ami may be optimistic that the stars will someday align, but for now J Street's timing is all wrong. 

Israel isn't having much luck with commercials these days. First there was the government-sponsored ad campaign late last year to persuade Israelis living in the United States to return home, which was yanked when it caused an uproar in the American Jewish community. Now, Iranian lawmaker Arsalan Fat'hipour is telling Iran's PressTV that the country may impose a ban on products from South Korean electronics manufacturer Samsung over a commercial depicting Israelis accidentally destroying an Iranian nuclear facility.

The ad couldn't come at a tenser time. Iranian leaders are accusing the Israeli spy agency Mossad of killing an Iranian nuclear scientist in January, and using increasingly heated rhetoric (just today, Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called Israel a "cancerous tumor" that must be "cut"). Meanwhile, the media is abuzz with reports that an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities could be imminent.

In the commercial for the Israeli cable company HOT, four characters from the HOT television series Asfur, all (poorly) disguised as Iranian women, meet a Mossad agent in Iran who's watching the show on his Samsung tablet. In checking out the device's features, one of the characters accidentally presses a button that blows up a nearby nuclear plant.

Here's the commercial:

PressTV has expressed outrage not only with the ad but also with its underlying assumptions -- that Iran is a "primitive society" and that "Israel is powerful enough to easily destroy Iran's nuclear facilities or assassinate the country's nuclear scientists." Fat'hipour, the Iranian lawmaker, argues that Samsung produced the commercial to cozy up with Israel. But a Samsung spokesperson in Iran tells PressTV that HOT -- not Samsung -- produced the ad, which promotes a cable deal offering subscribers free Samsung tablets. HOT has informed CNN that it has no comment on the controversy.

Of course, in the Middle East, any ad that veers toward the political is likely to be controversial. In 2009, for example, the Israel cell phone company Cellcom aired a commercial in which a soccer ball kicked by unseen Palestinians hits an Israeli military jeep patrolling the security barrier with the West Bank. The soldiers kick it back over the fence, only for the ball to return, sparking an impromptu soccer game among Israeli soldiers. "The ad has caused outrage among Palestinians and left-wing Israelis who accuse it of whitewashing the negative effects of the wall," ABC News noted at the time, adding that the ad agency that produced the commercial claimed that the spot was intended to show "how people can overcome obstacles between them to build friendship."

Iran's tough words for Samsung, however, may be about more than just HOT's incendiary ad. Last month, the Korea Herald reported that the Iranian government had retaliated against South Korea's support for Western sanctions of Iranian oil imports by demanding that Korean companies remove their billboards in the capital. One of the targets of Tehran's wrath? Good old Samsung.

With the news of Gilad Shalit's release from five years of captivity at the hands of Hamas, we found ourselves talking about the remarkable changes over the past half decade -- and what he's missed. It's not quite Charlton Heston waking up in a room full of talking apes,  but there's a lot that Shalit might find surprising. Upon his release, he said during an interview that he looked forward to "not doing the same things all day long." There's certainly plenty to keep him busy.

1. The iPhone

Remember that morning in January 2007, when Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone? For many people, life has been divided into pre- and post- iPhone since that moment. No word yet if Shalit was a Nokia man or a clamshell guy, but we're betting that he's never unlocked a smart phone with the swipe of his finger, never beheld Google Maps in the palm of his hand, and never tapped out a text message on a touch screen. Apple, get this man a 4S.

2. Twitter/Facebook

Back in the dark days of 2006, people still relied on phone calls and email to communicate. How anything was accomplished is lost to history, now that Facebook and Twitter have changed the manner -- and speed -- with which information is delivered. Facebook launched in 2004, but it was still a limited network when Shalit was abducted: Facebook did not open its doors to everyone over the age of 13 until Sept. 26, 2006. Twitter launched just one month after Shalit was detained, in July of 2006, and now boasts over 200 million users. Indeed, the platform was used extensively to spread word of Shalit's capture and any news of his release. The hashtag #GiladShalit spread around the globe, with the Jewish Week arguing it eclipsed the fame of the soldier himself.  

3. Barack Obama

When Shalit was imprisoned, George W. Bush was president. Two years later, the U.S. elected its first black president, Barack Obama. In 2006, Obama was a senator from Illinois, arguing against the war in Iraq and raising the debt ceiling. After two years in office, Iraq is peaceful and U.S. debt is under control. Just kidding! Shalit actually didn't miss much here.

4. The Beatles

In all fairness, Shalit most likely knew a few Beatles tunes. However, he wouldn't have seen them play in his native Israel: The group was barred from the country --  over fears that they would corrupt Israel's youth -- until 2008, when the government apologized for the national ban, instituted in 1965, and invited the surviving members to play a concert for Israel's 60th anniversary. In Sept., 2008, Paul McCartney finally took the stage in Tel Aviv. That said, it was only McCartney, so it doesn't really count.

5. Economic Collapse

In 2006, when Shalit was taken hostage, the global economy was humming along, buoyed by a strong real estate market and easy credit. By 2008, the boom was over and a recession was sweeping the globe, shifting international power, both politically and economically, perhaps irrevocably toward the developing world. The United States was hit hard by the slump, as was Europe, both of which continue to be plagued by protests and government infighting. China, on the other hand, saw its economy boom, while other emerging economies, including Brazil and India, avoided the worst of the dip and recovered relatively quickly. Shalit doesn't need to worry too much, though: While Israel did feel some of the effects of the recession in 2009, its economy has more than bounced back as its technology sector continues to grow.  

What other major milestones did Shalit miss over the last five years? Let us know in the comments.