More than 100,000 people have signed a petition in the past week calling to revoke the Pictures of the Year award given to AP photographer Ali Mahmud by Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism for his photograph of the abduction of Shani Louk during the Nova party on October 7.
Mahmud was among the journalists pre-notified about the attack, broadcasting live from the massacre and abuse for hours on end. Two months later, an Islamic radio and television stations conference titled "Messengers of Truth" was held in Beirut to support Gaza's media personnel. At the conference, Hamas' political bureau member Ghazi Hamad expounded the movement's doctrine on journalistic ethics: "A journalist need not be neutral, but a fighter for freedom and justice," he said, boasting that Hamas succeeded in turning the battle's image on its head through calculated use of media, tipping the scale of awareness in its favor.
Like other terrorist groups in the Strip, Hamas operates media outlets and employs journalists, some working concurrently for international news corporations like CNN, Reuters, and The New York Times. On October 7, they crossed the breached fence, capturing historic moments: a tractor destroying the fence; Gaza crowds rushing toward surrounding towns; Adina Moshe, kidnapped to Gaza in her pajamas, motorcycle-riding between two Hamas men; Yarden Bibas shielding her bloodied head from the Gazan mob's hammer blows, and more. Hamas sought stunning images, thinking of them as iconic as depictions of Palestinian "resistance."
Hamas has always put an emphasis on winning the media war. "On Oct. 7's 'Al-Aqsa Flood' [the name Hamas gave the atrocities on Oct. 7] the media played a crucial role in shaping the media narrative," high-ranking Hamas member Osama Hamdan said at a Tehran press conference. As part of Hamas' fight over the narrative, the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate accuses Israel of deliberately targeting journalists to conceal evidence and eliminate witnesses – one of the charges against Israel at The Hague.
War photographers' role transcends documentation. Controversial photographs depicting human cruelty or suffering are typically justified by the moral obligation to expose the world to atrocities. For journalists in the big media, the aim is usually to effect positive change, sometimes even stirring public outcry to stop the bloodshed. For Hamas and other terrorist groups' documentation and photography crews, the goal is to instill fear in the public consciousness, celebrating rather than exposing atrocities.
Shani's father Nissim Louk was among the first to understand the nature of this battle. He went to media outlets worldwide with two photos of his daughter – one before Hamas' attack, the other in the Toyota truck bed. He had fire in his belly so that he could illustrate the atrocities, not just a personal need but a collective one. From last month's UN discussion on Hamas militants' sexual assaults, Nissim returned stunned: instead of addressing Hamas's sex crimes, the discussion pivoted to isolated (later disproven) cases of Palestinian rapes. The narrative was flipped, but if the award-winning photograph stripped Shani of her humanity – her father consistently strives to restore it.
Juxtaposing the two photos, Nissim tells the story he wants, not Hamas'. How perverse that the Palestinians' victory photo is of a young woman on a truck bed, legs bent inhumanly, five armed terrorists towering over her. I remember that day's video: Shani driven to Gaza in the truck bed, a cheering crowd chasing and waving jubilantly, some children, some elderly, all trying to touch Shani's body, some spitting at her. It was horrific, certainly not something conceivable as a legacy. And yet.
