Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

Ajit Solanki/Associated Press

Bharatiya Janata Party supporters celebrating Sunday in Ahmadabad, India, after the announcement of state election results.

Somini Sengupta, Hindu Radical Is Re-elected in India - New York Times, December 24, 2007

NEW DELHI — He has been likened to the Emperor Nero, who fiddled while Rome burned. He has been denied entry into the United States for violations of religious freedom, yet praised as a business-friendly politician who has allowed private industry to flourish in his state.

On Sunday, voters re-elected the politician, Narendra Modi, arguably India’s most incendiary officeholder, as the chief minister of the western state of Gujarat. His victory, by a wide margin, was a stunning defeat for the country’s governing Congress Party and signaled that Mr. Modi and his charismatic, often pugnacious, brand of Hindu supremacist politics would be a force to be reckoned with in the future.Gujarat is considered a test case for national politics because it is viewed as a laboratory for radical Hindu politics in contemporary India.

Mr. Modi, a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party, is accused of sanctioning or taking no steps to stop Hindu mobs from massacring at least 1,000 of their Muslim neighbors in February 2002, after a mysterious fire engulfed a train carrying members of a Hindu nationalist organization, killing 59 people on board. Ten months later, voters in Gujarat returned Mr. Modi to power.

In elections held earlier this month, Mr. Modi’s B.J.P. captured 117 seats in of the 182-member state legislature, falling just short of a two-thirds majority; the Congress Party, which leads the nation’s governing coalition, trailed with 59 seats, while 6 went to other parties. The results were announced Sunday by the Election Commission of India.

World Press Photo of the Year 2006
Spencer Platt, USA, Getty Images. Young Lebanese drive through devastated neighborhood of South Beirut, 15 August, 2006

Munson: The main reason for recording human brutality, in pictures or in words,  should be to induce humans to become more humane. It should obviously never be a form of “voyeurism.” Those who record the agony of others violate their privacy in a way that can only be justified if it induces others to recognize the need to eliminate or at least curb unnecessary violence. Violating people’s privacy simply to take a prize-winning photograph is wrong.  But if a picture portraying human brutality can both induce humans to become more humane and win prizes, that is fine. Indeed, the prize may well increase exposure to the picture and the basic message it is intended to convey.

Mai Ghoussoub, Beirut and contradiction: reading the World Press Photo award, openDemocracy

Four stylish young women, an open-topped car, the rubble of war-torn Beirut … but where is the real power of Spencer Platt’s prize-winning image, asks Mai Ghoussoub.

(This article was first published on 13 February 2007)

I am certain that Spencer Platt’s picture which won the World Press Photo prize for 2006 looked disturbing and even repellent to most viewers at first glance. I admit that it bothered me when I first saw it on my screen. But I also admit that I kept on looking at it. What was it that intrigued me in this picture despite my unexplained revulsion? Why did I feel that I had to write about what I saw in the picture?

…I went to a housewarming party and I overheard two young Lebanese arguing about the same photo. Both were in their 20s and very “cosmopolitan”. One said: I think this is a great photograph, it shows us as we are, not people associated only with war and destruction. The second one was appalled and said: this is the “new orientalism” - instead of the women depicted in Delacroix’s classic orientalist paintings, today we have these modern, model-type Lebanese women against a background of war and poverty….I believe that the photo is stunning in the metaphor it creates about war photography. It tells us about the voyeurism of the photographer, of the act of taking photos in tragic situations: if there is a contradiction, it is in the encounter between art, beauty and tragedy. Covering a disaster in order to create a striking image is what Robert Capa did best, he became an icon for it and we, the viewers are becoming addicted to this art form.

An Afghan man from the village of Yaka China carrying a child, injured during an Apache helicopter attack, for treatment by American medics. Tim Hetherington

Sebastian Junger, Into the Valley of Death, Vanity Fair, January 2008

By many measures, Afghanistan is falling apart. The Afghan opium crop has flourished in the past two years and now represents 93 percent of the world’s supply, with an estimated street value of $38 billion in 2006. That money helps bankroll an insurgency that is now operating virtually within sight of the capital, Kabul. Suicide bombings have risen eightfold in the past two years, including several devastating attacks in Kabul, and as of October, coalition casualties had surpassed those of any previous year. The situation has gotten so bad, in fact, that ethnic and political factions in the northern part of the country have started stockpiling arms in preparation for when the international community decides to pull out. Afghans—who have seen two foreign powers on their soil in 20 years—are well aware of the limits of empire. They are well aware that everything has an end point, and that in their country end points are bloodier than most.

The Korengal is widely considered to be the most dangerous valley in northeastern Afghanistan, and Second Platoon is considered the tip of the spear for the American forces there. Nearly one-fifth of all combat in Afghanistan occurs in this valley, and nearly three-quarters of all the bombs dropped by nato forces in Afghanistan are dropped in the surrounding area. The fighting is on foot and it is deadly, and the zone of American control moves hilltop by hilltop, ridge by ridge, a hundred yards at a time. There is literally no safe place in the Korengal Valley. Men have been shot while asleep in their barracks tents.

World Press Photo, 2007 Exhibition, Photo of the Year

Nathan Dvir/ Independent photographer
Naim Eliam, Palestinian resident of Jabalia Refugee Camp waiting at Erez Checkpoint with the body of his three-month old son, who died after treatment of congenital defect at Tel-HaShomer Hospital. The checkpoint was closed in this period due to Hamas having taken control of the Gaza strip. June 18, 2007. Digital photo.

The Year in Images - Photo Essays - TIME

Mourned
A member of the military accompanies Rachel Guy-Latham at a viewing of the body of her husband, Sergeant Thomas Lee Latham, 23, who was killed by an IED in Baghdad, Iraq in March. Anthony Suau for TIME.

Rwanda, 1994 - Survivor of Hutu death camp.

James Nachtwey

Displaced Iraqi children watch U.S. soldiers while waiting at a checkpoint before returning to their home in Fallujah. (Photo by John Moore, AP, April 27, 2004.)

2005 Pulitzer Prizes-BREAKING NEWS PHOTOGRAPHY, Works

President Bush meets with Lance Cpl. Isaac Gallegos during a visit to the Center for the Intrepid at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, November 8, 2007.

REUTERS/Jim Young

Source: http://www.reuters.com/news/pictures/slideshow?collectionId=1272#a=12

YouTube - Bethlehem checkpoint, 4am, accessed December 19, 2007

(Warning: The film accessible by clicking on this article’s title contains graphic images.)

Mona Mahmoud, Maggie O’Kane and Ian Black, UK has left behind murder and chaos, says Basra police chief, Guardian, December 17, 2007

In an ITV film on the Guardian Unlimited website , Basra’s police chief lists a catalogue of failings, saying:

· Basra has become so lawless that in the last three months 45 women have been killed for being “immoral” because they were not fully covered or because they may have given birth outside wedlock;

· The British unintentionally rearmed Shia militias by failing to recognise that Iraqi troops were loyal to more than one authority;

· Shia militia are better armed than his men and control Iraq’s main port.

Soldiering On
Photograph by James Nachtwey

A long day catches up with Joey Bozik, 28. Bozik and wife, Jayme, were married while Bozik recovered from his wounds. Bozik lost his legs and an arm in Iraq.

Iraq War Medicine - National Geographic Magazine, DECEMBER 2006

A woman walking down steps in the old city of Jerusalem, November 18, 2007. Photo by Michal Fattal/Flash90.

Flash 90

Ronen Zvulun/ Reuters
Israeli soldiers break into a Palestinian house next to Qalandiya Checkpoint, Jerusalem.
March 16, 2007

Munson: Dion Nissenbaum’s blog “Checkpoint Jerusalem” is excellent. He is the Jerusalem bureau chief for the McClatchy newspapers.

Dion Nissenbaum’s Blog: Checkpoint Jerusalem, December 16, 2007

“Local Testimony ,” the Israeli photographic contest that Yoav Galai won last year for his series (mentioned below) on soldiers wounded in Lebanon, is out with its new exhibit in Tel Aviv.The exhibit includes a diverse collection of images that you can see here .

There’s a stark series by Wissam Nasser [Nassar] from Maan News about an Israeli artillery bombardment of Gaza that killed 19 innocent Palestinians in Gaza, most of them from one family.

There’s a great multi-media series by Pulitzer Prize winner Muhammad Muheisen on Palestinian life through the seasons.

Wissam Nassar, MaanImages

Deadlocked, Gaza
In the beginning of November 2006, Israel began shelling the Beit Hanun neighborhood in Gaza. The worst attack took place at dawn on November 8th. In the attack, 19 Palestinian citizens were killed, among them ten women and seven children, and tens were wounded. Most of the victims were from the Atamna family.
November 2006
Digital photo

Uriel Sinai, Haaretz, Getty Images, סדרות (Go to second gallery)

The city of Sderot and the communities of the Gaza envelope have been marked by Palestinian terrorist groups from Gaza as the prime goal for attack by Qassam missiles. In the last year, an average of five Qassam rockets have been launched over Sderot every day, and force the residents of the area to live in constant fear of the next “code red” alarm.
August 2007
Digital photo, converted to black and white