Lebanon: Full Color Pictures of the Atrocities

In the last few weeks, an increasing number of horrible, very upsetting photos of the massacres committed by Israel have been coming out of Lebanon.

The alternative media are doing everything possible to break the censorship of images that was enforced by the Corporate and authoritarian State media which only show a sanitized war, disinfected images of material destruction.

The smuggling and widespread dissemination of images from The Realm of The Real that are coming out out of Lebanon and Gaza now make all of us uncomfortable. For those of us who do editing and publishing work, they bring up the awful worry of "is this appropriate?"

Two bodies aflame, after Israeli bombings in Lebanon

From the massacre at Qana, Lebanon, conducted by the Israeli military.

Victim

Lebanon Victims

A child's body mangled in the Israeli bombings of Lebanon

In "normal" times, we do our best to protect peoples' privacy, we do everything possible to prevent voyerism, sensationalism, exploitation of the images of pain, desecration of the dead. But these times are not normal.

The world needs help to understand what is happening. These images, just like the images from Abu Ghraib which helped to focus the attention of a dizzy world, are clear: it's hell on earth here.

People from under the rubble, from inside burning houses, from inside exploded neighborhoods write to us and say "tell the truth, show the world, please find some way to get this horror to stop."

But doesn't the image of a dead child belong to her family, to her loved ones, to her own memory? Yes, of course, but it also belongs to the whole of the community that's being slaughtered, to all of Humanity whose sensibilities might become awakened by the image of the crushed and broken sleeping child, by the image of her butchered sister, her incinerated brother.

What is "appropriate" in the horror that we find ourselves today?

Cyprus IndyMedia editorial collective

http://english-cyprus.indymedia.org/newswire/display/200/index.php
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Related:

"Hoping you are safe / day 24 of the Israeli war of genocide, destruction and siege of Lebanon"

http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-cyprus/2006-August/0807-0l.html

Help us defend the people of Lebanon and Gaza

http://english-cyprus.indymedia.org/newswire/display/165/index.php

Bomb Number Five, Salaam

http://english-cyprus.indymedia.org/newswire/display/201/index.php

Cyprus IndyMedia editorial collective
Homepage: http://english-cyprus.indymedia.org/