Last Saturday I missed it. This Saturday I didn’t. The Network of Photographers for Palestine (NPP) is a Scottish-registered collective of activists and photographers dedicated to giving Palestinian photographers a worldwide audience. They recognise that mainstream media representation of Palestine is grossly biased, and they are working to correct it. They make their exhibitions available digitally to anyone who wants to host them locally. Browns Gallery on Castle Street in Inverness — one of the most respected contemporary art spaces in the Highlands — volunteered a generous space to exhibit the photographs of six Palestinian photographers at the NPP’s request.
Below is a short video of my friend Wendy, who is on the NPP Board of Directors, speaking briefly about the NPP and the exhibition. I then want to show you some of what I saw — alongside what senior Israeli officials have been saying about the people in these photographs.
Israeli officials have been competing to say the most dehumanising things they can about Palestinians. Dehumanisation has a purpose. It makes it easier for a society to accept — and even cheer for — the wholesale murder of people who have been stripped of their humanity in the public imagination. We have seen this before. It is a well-documented feature of every genocide in history. You tell people that the other group are animals, vermin, a plague, a biblical enemy that God himself commands you to destroy — and then the killing becomes not just possible but righteous. Israel has not stumbled into this language. It is the language of exterminatory intent. This is what is happening now, in plain sight, with the full support of the world’s most powerful governments.
What follows is a selection of photos from the Browns exhibition. They have all been taken by photographers living under occupation, siege and a deliberate and systematic programme of extermination. I am sharing images I took with my phone camera at the gallery. The quality of my photos doesn’t do justice to the originals, and you will see some lighting issues I couldn’t prevent. But the images are clear enough and the captions are exactly as they appear near each photo in the gallery.
I have interspersed the images with quotes from senior Israeli officials — the Israeli Prime Minister, ministers of the government, Knesset Members. Read their words. Then look at the images. Then ask yourself what the word ‘human’ means, and who gets to decide.
Abby Martin’s recent video documents further statements by Israeli ministers, officials and members of the public — and it is worth watching if you can bear it. You can see these people’s faces and body language as they say the unsayable, trying to outdo each other, go further, be crueller, strip away whatever remains of Palestinian humanity in their own minds.
What is striking is that they feel no shame. They say these things on camera, in public, without hesitation. They do not realise — or do not care — that in trying to dehumanise Palestinians they are revealing themselves. Every word is a self-indictment. The barbarism they project onto others is entirely their own.
Yoav Gallant served as Israel’s Minister of Defence between 2022 and 2024. On 9th October 2023 he said: “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”
Yoav Kisch, Minister of Education — “Those are animals, they have no right to exist. I am not debating the way it will happen, but they need to be exterminated.”
Amichai Eliyahu, Minister of Heritage — “One of the options is to drop an atomic bomb on Gaza.”
Revital Gottlieb, Knesset member — “Bring down buildings!! Bomb without distinction!! Stop with this impotence. Flatten Gaza. Without mercy! This time, there is no room for mercy!”
Amit Halevi Likud Knesset Member said, “There should be two goals for this victory: One, there is no more Muslim land in the land of Israel … After we make it the land of Israel, Gaza should be left as a monument, like Sodom”.
Ariel Kallner, Knesset member (Likud) — “Right now, one goal: Nakba! A Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of 48. A Nakba in Gaza and a Nakba for anyone who dares to join!”
The Network of Photographers for Palestine makes these exhibitions available to venues across the country and around the world. If there is an exhibition near you, go and see it. Stand in front of these photographs. Read the captions. The photographers took these images at enormous personal risk, under bombardment, under siege, under occupation. The least we can do is make sure we bear witness as our fellow human beings are being targeted for annihilation by a criminally insane society and its regime, aided and abetted by the world’s most powerful countries.
To find exhibitions, support the NPP’s work, or host an exhibition yourself, visit nppalestine.org.
“… the Commission assessed specific statements made by the President of Israel, Isaac Herzog, the Prime Minister, Mr. Netanyahu, and the former Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, among others, and concluded that the “direct and public incitement to commit genocide” under article III (c) of the Genocide Convention was established and the officials were liable to prosecution for incitement to genocide. The Commission found that the acts of the officials, as agents of the State of Israel, were attributable to the State of Israel and Israel was therefore responsible under article III (c) of the Genocide Convention for its officials’ direct and public incitement to commit genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. (Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel)
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