Manufacturing a victim offensive

Power Line:

It is commonly said that by storing weapons in mosques and firing rockets and mortars from residential areas and school yards, Hamas is using human shields in Gaza, a war crime. But the truth is really worse than that. Hamas doesn't endanger civilians in hopes that it will deter retaliation; it does so in the hope and expectation that civilians will be killed and wounded.

This tactic is part of a larger strategy to create tragedy and disaster, which the Palestinians have developed into something akin to an industrial process. They build tunnels, but they do not build bomb shelters. They do not, apparently, suspend classes in schools in the midst of bombardments. And Hamas, with the tolerance if not approval of most Gazans, uses schoolyards as launching zones for rockets and mortars. Think about it: is there anything about a schoolyard that makes it a particularly desirable place from which to fire ordnance? No. Hamas uses schools (and mosques, and residential areas generally) in this way in the hope that civilians, especially children, will be killed.

News service photographers play a key role in the production of civilian casualties. If the casualties were not documented in graphic fashion, they would not be an effective tool to stir up hatred against Israel and sympathy for the hapless Palestinians. Accordingly, the job of the news photographer is to be on the spot when tragedy strikes so that, within days if not hours, the images of Palestinian suffering thus captured can be reproduced on placards in anti-Israel rallies around the world.

Khalil Hamra of the Associated Press is one such photographer. Hamra specializes in "reaction" shots: "Palestinians react after seeing the bodies of relatives...," "Palestinian women react from a window...," "A Palestinian reacts as others tend to the wounded...," and so on. On occasion, Hamra has been accused of fakery. In this photo, taken during the current conflict in Gaza, the man on the left appears to be injured, but the children on the right do not. They look as though they were told to lie down so they could be photographed with the injured man and described as "children...wounded in an Israeli missile strike:"

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Several examples are provided of the victim money shots used by Hamas in its victim offensive. There is more commentary on the strategy too, which has been much discussed here, but we should not overlook how the photos are an integral part of the strategy.