ExtremeTech, citing forensic image analyst Neal Krawetz, summed up the charge against the photographer, "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."

To be clear, there is no doubt that the incident captured by Hansen took place: "Gaza Burial" depicts a crowd of weeping  Palestinian men carrying the corpses of two young children killed by Israeli airstrikes through the streets of Gaza during Israel's Operation Pillar of Defense last November. The tears, the dead bodies, the vast anguished crowd -- none of this is in question as "faked." What's at stake is whether the image was edited beyond the limits that are considered acceptable in photojournalism.

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It was the first deadly airstrike in Gaza since a truce was reached with Palestinian militants last November, and is the most serious test yet of the Egyptian-brokered agreement.

The strike came alongside the fatal stabbing of an Israeli settler in the West Bank, the first killing by a Palestinian of an Israeli in the territory in over a year.

The aircraft hit the motorcycle as it was traveling northwest of Gaza City, killing the driver and wounding a passenger. A bystander was also wounded, according to Gaza medical officials.

The Israeli military said it had successfully killed Haitham Mishal, describing him as a jihadi militant involved in an April 17 rocket attack on the southern Israeli resort town of Eilat and other violence. Ashraf al-Kidra, Gaza's Health Ministry spokesman, said Mishal was a policeman.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had warned in recent days that Israel would not tolerate rocket fire from either the Gaza Strip or Egypt's Sinai Desert.

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Wednesday's airstrikes were, according to the Israeli military, "accurate hits" on "terror sites." The attacks came in response to rocket fire aimed toward Israel and amid heightened Palestinian rage. Palestinian officials have blamed Israel for the death of Palestinian prisoner and cancer sufferer Maysara Abu Hamdiyeh, who was allegedly negligently treated. The 64-year-old's death has sparked hunger strikes and riots among Palestinian prisoners in Israel and may have catalyzed an intensification of cross-border hostilities. The AP noted:

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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the breakthrough after a phone conversation with his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The 20-minute phone call was brokered by visiting President Barack Obama shortly before he left Israel.

The announcement was an unexpected reversal by Netanyahu, who has repeatedly rejected calls to apologize. But the two countries' joint interests, including fears that the Syrian civil war could spill over their respective borders, made the time ripe to mend relations.

"The two men agreed to restore normalization between Israel and Turkey, including the dispatch of ambassadors and the cancellation of legal steps against Israeli soldiers," a statement from Netanyahu's office said.

Netanyahu "expressed regret over the deterioration in bilateral relations and noted his commitment to working out the disagreements in order to advance peace and regional stability," it said.

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After a visit to Israel's national museum - where he inspected the Dead Sea Scrolls, which highlight the Jewish people's ancient connection to the land that is now Israel - Obama headed to the West Bank to tell the Palestinians that the creation of a Palestinian state remains a priority for his administration.

He is not bringing a new plan to relaunch peace talks, but in meetings with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and a speech to Israeli students later in the day, he will appeal to both sides to halt unilateral actions that make negotiations more difficult.

Those troublesome actions include continued construction of Jewish housing settlements on land claimed by the Palestinians and repeated Palestinian efforts to achieve recognition at the United Nations in the absence of a peace agreement.

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Militants claiming affiliation with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement took responsibility for the attack, saying they fired the rocket to avenge the death of a Palestinian in Israeli custody.

The detainee, Arafat Jaradat, 30, died over the weekend after interrogation by Israel's Shin Bet security services. Palestinian officials, citing an autopsy, said the detainee was tortured, while Israel says more tests are needed to determine the cause of death.

Jaradat's death sparked protests in the West Bank, including near the town of Bethlehem on Monday.

Two Palestinian teens, ages 13 and 16, were wounded in a confrontation with Israeli soldiers. The older boy was transferred to Jerusalem's Hadassah Hospital after being shot in the head and was in critical condition Tuesday, breathing through a respirator, officials said.

In the West Bank, Abbas on Tuesday accused the Israeli military of using increasingly harsh methods to clamp down on Palestinian rock-throwing protests.

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Of course, it’s impossible to say with certainty which actions "Anonymous" actually pulled off, since its membership is ill-defined and anyone can claim association, not to mention that sometimes Anonymous hacktivists act alone or as part of a subgroup.  Even when Anonymous has put out one of its quintessential videos claiming responsibility for a hack or DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service—shutting down a website by flooding it with requests) attack, it hasn’t always turned out to be true.

Given that, below are Anonymous’ “Top 20” for 2012. With its widening arsenal and focus, one can only imagine what these Internet denizens have in store for 2013.

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Meanwhile, movies grappling with the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- where Hamas continues to trade deadly rockets with Israeli forces at the cost of many lives -- populate a smaller number of theaters this fall. While none may receive nearly the same exposure as "Lincoln," collectively they signal a far more dire situation by analyzing it in real time. They're also exceptional works of art, furious statements about the vanity of conflict and uniformly devoid of potential solutions. This is true cinema of the moment, provocative and devastating but utterly essential to understanding the world.

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The historic General Assembly decision late Thursday to accept "Palestine" as a non-member observer state won't actually grant independence to the 4.3 million Palestinians who live in the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.

Israel remains an occupying force in the first two territories and continues to severely restrict access to Gaza, ruled by the Hamas militant group. Nor does the vote plaster over the rift in the Palestinian leadership that has led to the emergence of dueling governments in the West Bank and Gaza.

But by gaining approval at a world forum overwhelmingly sympathetic to their quest, Palestinians hope to make it harder for Israel to resist global pressure to negotiate the borders of a future Palestine based on lines Israel held before capturing the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza in 1967.

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Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas received a standing ovation following his pre-vote speech, in which he asked the General Assembly to issue a "birth certificate" for Palestine.

8:00 a.m. (EST): On Thursday, Palestine is set to win U.N. recognition as a nonmember state, despite aggressive opposition from the U.S.. The result is assured with 132 of the U.N.'s 193 member states having already recognized a putative state of Palestine and pledges from nations including France and Spain to vote "yes." What the upgrade for Palestine to "nonmember" state will mean -- especially in terms of conflict resolution -- is less clear.

For many U.N. member states, the vote is a means to strengthen Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' hand over his rival Hamas, especially following the militant group's bump in popularity following Israel's military assault on Gaza this month. Abbas has said he will use a victory in the General Assembly to return to the negotiating table with Israel and push his condition that Israel freeze the growth of settlements.

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Maj. Gen. (Res.) Yitzhak (Jerry) Gershon, the national director and CEO of Friends of the IDF, said in a press release, "We regret the fact that Stevie Wonder has decided to cancel his performance at an important community event of the FIDF, an American organization supporting the educational, cultural, and well-being needs of Israel’s soldiers, their families, and the families of fallen soldiers."

The petition, however, called the IDF "an institution which promotes, enables, and protects Israel's Apartheid regime."

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Last week, another one of Fatima's brothers, 6-year-old Mahmoud, was critically injured when an Israeli attack knocked him to the ground, leaving a nearly three-inch-long gash in his torso and damaging his lungs.

And so it comes as little surprise that Fatima, now 13, like thousands of other children in the Gaza Strip, suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

"She was cursing at people, or we would find her in the street or the police would bring her back home," her father, Osama Mohamed Qortoum, said. "Fatima was old enough to recognize what happened [to her brother]. She was in the house and saw him die from the balcony."

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Public outcry led Gyöngyösi to issue a tepid apology in which he claimed he never asked for a list of Jews, but “citizens with dual Israeli-Hungarian citizenship.”

Reuters noted that between 500,000 and 600,000 Hungarian Jews died in the Holocaust, according to the Holocaust Memorial Centre in Budapest. According to some accounts, one in three Jews killed in Auschwitz were Hungarian nationals.

Like other far-right parties gaining ground in economically flailing Europe, Jobbik registered as a political party in 2003 and has gained increasing influence while vilifying Jews and Hungary's 700,000-strong Roma population.

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Barak, a decorated former general and one-time prime minister, said he would stay on in his current post until a new government is formed following the Jan. 22 balloting.

“I didn’t make this decision without hesitating, but I made it wholeheartedly,” he told a hastily arranged news conference, saying he had been wrestling with the decision for weeks.

Barak’s resignation could mean the departure of the most moderating influence on hawkish Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is expected to retain his job after the election. Barak, who heads a small centrist faction in parliament, had often served as Netanyahu’s unofficial envoy to Washington in order to smooth over differences with the Obama White House.

Barak, 70, made the surprise announcement even after polls showed his breakaway Independence Party gaining momentum after Israel’s recent military offensive in the Gaza Strip.

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His mother's home was bombed in the 2008-09 Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip, which left hundreds dead and thousands of homes destroyed. In renewed fighting last week, an entire block of buildings housing his extended family was badly damaged in an airstrike that Israel said was aimed at a militant.

While none of his relatives was hurt, the 61-year-old retired schoolteacher once again has to worry about providing shelter for his family. Some relatives are sleeping in an empty shop, squeezed in with other family members. Others are spending their nights in rooms covered in plastic wrap to shield them from the winter rain because all the windows were blown out.

"This is going to cost thousands," Azzam said. "The longer I wait, the more damage will happen," he added, pointing to a heavily damaged building sitting atop tilting concrete columns.

Azzam finds himself caught again in a pile of paperwork to seek assistance, trying to secure hard-to-get construction materials. This time, he hopes the process will be smoother, thanks to both Israel's pledges to ease its longstanding border blockade and the newfound political clout of Gaza's Hamas rulers in the region.

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Hamas security tried to defuse the situation and keep the crowds away from the border, signaling the incident is unlikely to jeopardize the Egyptian-brokered cease-fire.

The truce, which calls for an end to Gaza rocket fire on Israel and Israeli airstrikes on Gaza, came after eight days of cross-border fighting, the bloodiest between Israel and Hamas in four years.

On Friday, hundreds of Palestinians approached Israel's border fence in several locations in southern Gaza.

In the past, Israel's military barred Palestinians from getting close to the fence, and soldiers routinely opened fire on violators to enforce a 300-meter-wide no-go zone meant to prevent infiltrations into Israel.

Since the cease-fire, growing numbers of Gazans have entered the no-go zone, testing expectations that such restrictions would now be lifted.

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There was the ferocious Israeli assault in 2008-2009 that left more than a thousand dead. Then there was Operation Summer Rains, just two years before that, where 400 Palestinians and 11 Israelis were killed.

A negotiated cease-fire to the current battle — a week long, heavy exchange of fire between Israeli Defense Forces and Hamas fighters — will offer only a temporary respite from the decades of violence, they said.

Israeli officials have painted the offensive, which kicked-off on Nov. 14, as a mission to deter the Hamas-run government and other armed groups from firing rockets at Israeli towns.

But short-term gains from any Egypt-brokered truce, which is rumored to include a halt in attacks on both sides and a potential end to Israel’s Gaza blockade, will eventually be overshadowed by the chronic, unaddressed ills of the long-running conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

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The bus exploded at around noon Wednesday near military headquarters in central Tel Aviv, the Israeli commercial capital.

Israeli officials called it a terrorist attack, and said police have set up roadblocks in the area to find the person who planted the explosive device, Reuters reported.

"We strongly believe that this was a terror attack," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told the Associated Press.

The AP said that in Gaza, the bus bombing was praised from mosque loudspeakers.

US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is in the region, working to help broker a deal to end the violence after eight days of Israeli air strikes and Hamas rocket attacks.

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