Mubarak Photoshopped

Origin

On Tuesday September 14, 2010 the Egyptian government newspaper Al-Ahram published a photo in which the Egyptian leader is leading the delegation of heads of government to start peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians in the White House. Were also in the photo Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, King Abdullah of Jordan and the leader of the Palestinian National Authority, Mahmoud Abbas.

Immediately, the opposition media spread the lie that an Egyptian blogger found that the image had been retouched. Supposedly, the real picture, taken by photographer Alex Wong for the agency Getty, was Obama who was leading the procession. Thanks to photoshop, the figure of Mubarak was cut and placed at center stage, as if it was he who commanded the group of political leaders.

Original picture

Fabricated Image

Elcadillo.org (English translation), a Spanish website, satirically claimed Mubarak's photo was not fabricated and "proved" it by using what would become the first alterations from the meme :

He has led the New York marathon as was never in the last place

He was the first to participate in the festival of San Fermin in Pamplona

He lead the Israeli gay parade in Tel-Aviv

He is also a great leader as he is known as the first guide of the great migration of dinosaurs .

After the news surfaced in International news outlets such as the BBC and The Guardian, gossip site Gawker, and even Gizmodo, Al-Ahram chief editor Ossama Saraya issued a rather unapologetic statement in his weekly column claiming the pictures was not a fabrication, but rather an "expressive" photo highlighting Egypt's leading role in the peace talks. In response, Egyptian users on Twitter started poking fun at Saraya's statement. In addition many Facebook users fired back at Saraya with their own versions of "expressive" photos, such as this one

And This

And this (Soheir Zaky, famous Egyptian belly-dancer inaugurating peace talks)

And this (Obviously poking fun at Mubarak taking his son Gamal along, supposedly to win the approval of the US administration for him succeeding his father)