Hillary Clinton edited out of Situation Room photo by Hasidic newspaper

Take a look at the photo published above, famously snapped in the Situation Room as the U.S. raided Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan. The astute viewer will notice that, like some sort of sexist version of Highlights magazine, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been Photoshopped out of the picture (not to mention Counterterrorism Director Audrey Tomason, who barely even made it into the original photo)!

Der Tzitung, a Brooklyn-based Hasidic newspaper, is the publication responsible for the edited photo. The Photoshop job is in fact part of the paper's editorial policy of excluding images of women from its pages, citing that the "sexually suggestive" nature of half the world's population is simply too much for the other half of the world's population.

And as Jezebel reports, the paper's coming under fire from all sides:

Jewish Week's Rabbi Jason Miller points out that the altered image violates a central tenet of the faith: "Der Tzitung edited Hillary Clinton out of the photo, thereby changing history. To my mind, this act of censorship is actually a violation of the Jewish legal principle of g'neivat da'at (deceit)."

What would the paper do, one wonders, if Hillary Clinton had won the Democratic primary and become President of the United States? Run pictures of only the podium from State of the Union addresses? Publish images of foreign leaders, including Israeli ones, shaking hands with nobody? Who knows. At any rate, happy Mother's Day!