The Israeli Haredi daily HaMevaser also managed to remove Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo from the picture, and chose to crop it so that Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt was just out of shot - although her left hand stays in.

Haredi publications have been criticised in the past for editing women out of their pictures, citing modesty as the reason. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu can't even use that excuse to explain why he tweeted a picture of himself in the front row of world leaders at the march, but managed to crop the shot just at the point where Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was out rather than in.

Abbas and Netanyahu were separated by just four world leaders in the front line of the weekend rally, including Merkel and French President Francois Hollande. Their scene-stealing positions were particularly astounding given the French government reportedly asked both to stay away.

Israeli newspaper Haaretz said it had heard from sources that Hollande had sent a message to Netanyahu asking him to stay away from Paris for the march to avoid the risk of attention being diverted to other controversial issues, such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The same message was apparently sent to Abbas.

Netanyahu's people did initially say he would not be going to Paris because of security concerns, while Abbas said he wouldn't be going because of the bad French weather.

Netanyahu changed his mind when other senior Israeli politicians announced they would be attending the march. As a result the French invited Abbas.

Israelis are now clutching their heads in embarrassment and mocking their leader because of his gauche behaviour while in Paris.

According to New York-based newspaper The Jewish Daily Forward cameras for a local media outlet caught Netanyahu elbowing aside a woman French minister as he tried to jump the queue for the bus that would transport the group to the starting point of the march. Finding himself relegated to the second row at the march, he shoved aside the president of Mali and inserted himself in the front row.

Haaretz lamented: "There was nothing further from Parisian manners, refinement and style than the behaviour of Netanyahu."

As for the Haredi newspaper and its squeamishness about running pictures of women, Merkel is at least in high-powered company. Some ultra-Orthodox publications airbrushed then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton out of the White House Situation Room photo taken during the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011.

One of the newspapers involved Der Tzitung had actually backed Clinton during her political career.

While pictures of Israeli women politicians are also edited out of haredi publications, being cropped or having their faces blurred, the rule apparently did not apply to former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir.

The Forward has also reported women had  disappeared from advertisements in  haredi publications, the faces of women and girls had been blurred in memorial notices, a pair of women's shoes was erased from a photo of a family's shoe drawer, and a women's face was even blurred in a Holocaust-era photo, moments before her daughter was killed in the final liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto.