Tena Thau: Unsanitize the genocide

First published in Waging Nonviolence

Trigger Warning: graphic images of violence

To convince more people of the necessity of a ceasefire, pro-Palestine activists should disseminate graphic images of the war more widely.

The scenes that Palestinian journalists have risked their lives to capture are haunting: young children shaking with fear after surviving airstrikes; lying in pools of blood on crowded hospital floors; lifeless, in the arms of their inconsolable parents. These photographs and videos, which stream out of Gaza endlessly, speak for themselves. Anyone who has seen them, and has a semblance of a moral conscience, will understand the moral necessity of an immediate ceasefire.

But there is a fraction of the population that hasn’t been shown these harrowing images. They will have seen pictures of buildings reduced to rubble — but not of bodies of children ripped to pieces. Mainstream newspapers present a much more sanitized portrait of the war than one sees if one follows Palestinian journalists’ social media accounts. And so the genocide in Gaza — which is being “livestreamed” to some — is largely invisible to many others.

Even active social media users will not see the horrors of the war in Gaza unless they look for them. Graphic violence — when it is not censored outright — is algorithmically demoted, and hidden behind click-through screens. Pro-Palestine accounts have also been disproportionately “shadow-banned,” according to a December Human Rights Watch report.

But herein lies an opportunity for the pro-Palestine movement: I think it can win over many political centrists, and probably even some hawks, simply by showing more people the horrors of this war.

History attests to the power that images of graphic violence can have. In 1967, Martin Luther King was moved to break his silence over the Vietnam War (at a time when the war was still very popular among the American public), after seeing images in Ramparts magazine of Vietnamese children with napalm burns.

In 1982, when Israel was bombing Lebanon, Ronald Reagan was outraged by televised scenes of the violence. So he called up then-prime minister of Israel, Menachem Begin, and demanded that the bombing stop. (It did, within minutes of Reagan’s call.)

Seeing graphic violence may have even stirred up a flicker of moral feeling in Donald Trump. Reportedly, he and Ivanka were moved by photographs of children woundedin a chemical attack in Syria, and this was the impetus for his 2017 decision to launch missile strikes on a Syrian airbase. While I disagree with that policy decision, the case serves to illustrate that seeing the horrors of war can arouse feelings of compassion, and move people into action.

So how can we get more people to see, with their eyes, the unfolding genocide?

Pro-Palestine groups often host screenings of the horrors of the war for audiences of people wearing keffiyehs and waving Palestinian flags. To increase political support for an arms embargo and ceasefire, we need to fill these seats with people who are not yet part of the pro-Palestine movement. We should especially try to reach those with the most political power. U.S. policymakers, journalists, social media influencers, potential political donors and religious leaders of all faiths, should be sent personalized invitations to these screenings.

Antiwar groups could also consider using targeted advertisements to disseminate these images and videos to demographic groups unlikely to otherwise see them. And each of us can help out, by sharing and discussing what we have seen with our family members and friends.

To be clear, I do not propose that activists necessarily share the most graphic images they can find. Such a tactic could backfire, if it leads viewers to shut their computer screens, or to feel disgust in place of empathy. It is probably best to use visuals that are graphic enough to communicate the immensity of the suffering in Gaza, but not so gruesome that they cause viewers to disengage.

Still, these images will be painful to see. Some may take this to be a decisive reason against showing them: In a recent paper, three psychologists at the University of California argue that we should refrain from looking at or sharing any graphic images of the war in Gaza at all, for the sake of our psychological health. (God forbid we Americans experience mental discomfort from the sight of Palestinian children who have been slaughtered with weapons that our own government supplied.)

We can look after ourselves, though, without looking away from the ongoing atrocities. Since awareness of injustice invariably leads to mental anguish — and willful ignorance is not a morally acceptable response — the philosopher Myisha Cherry has emphasized the importance of practicing self- and solidarity care. Journalists and human rights workers have developed strategies for protecting their mental health while viewing images of graphic violence, which we can also deploy. 

The Biden-Harris administration, Trump and most members of Congress are currently politically incentivised to oppose an arms embargo. If we can broaden the ceasefire movement’s coalition — by getting more people to see the reality of the war in Gaza — we could alter that political calculation. We might even manage to reach the hearts of some of these cold politicians.

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Tena Thau is a postdoctoral researcher at Oxford, and an incoming Research Fellow at University College London. She specializes in moral and political philosophy.

First published in Waging NonViolence. Included in Vox Populi with permission.