"In one of the greatest acts of dissociation I can recall, Koudelka walks into the
bantustans of the West Bank – a region teeming with a few million imprisoned and brutalised human beings, and is moved by the
destruction of the landscape!
That is, he choses one of the greatest physical structures of
political, cultural, historical and social segregation and negation
concocted in modern history and reproduces it in his images as an
apolitical statement about the environment. In fact, he gloats about it
when he
explains:"
---------------
It
is difficult to fathom the cowardice that underpins Koudelka’s
prioritisation of a mythical holy landscape over a real human one. It
takes a tremendous amount of ignorance, or an equally large amount of
hypocrisy to make such a claim. I find it unbelievable that this
otherwise intelligent man spent at least 3 weeks on multiple trips over 4
years amongst the dispossessed, harassed, humiliated, imprisoned,
brutalised, demean, denigrated, violated, trapped and helpless
Palestinian population, and came back with an ‘apolitical outrage’ about
the landscape. But Koudelka must have seen it all. He just chose not to
say anything about it, to turn his eyes away from it, to erase his
moral conscience about it. He saw it all, but he chose not to include it
in the photos, or in the text. And now not even in his interview. - See
more at:
http://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2013-11-19/a-photographer-who-obscures-the-victims/#sthash.YNCNbCtI.dpuf
It
is difficult to fathom the cowardice that underpins Koudelka’s
prioritisation of a mythical holy landscape over a real human one. It
takes a tremendous amount of ignorance, or an equally large amount of
hypocrisy to make such a claim. I find it unbelievable that this
otherwise intelligent man spent at least 3 weeks on multiple trips over 4
years amongst the dispossessed, harassed, humiliated, imprisoned,
brutalised, demean, denigrated, violated, trapped and helpless
Palestinian population, and came back with an ‘apolitical outrage’ about
the landscape. But Koudelka must have seen it all. He just chose not to
say anything about it, to turn his eyes away from it, to erase his
moral conscience about it. He saw it all, but he chose not to include it
in the photos, or in the text. And now not even in his interview. - See
more at:
http://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2013-11-19/a-photographer-who-obscures-the-victims/#sthash.YNCNbCtI.dpuf-------------------------
On the same issue, Jonathan Cook
writes:
The
elderly Koudelka has reached a point in his career and his life where
one might have hoped that he would not have to worry too much about
contradicting dominant narratives (i.e. myths) or about damaging his
reputation. But it seems saying critical things about Israel, rather
than just showing them, is career-death even for someone like Koudelka.
Instead he starts the interview observing that he had always before
avoided visiting the “holy land” and finally came under pressure and
with great reluctance: “I don’t want to get mixed up with Israel because
it’s very, very complicated”. - See more at:
http://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2013-11-19/a-photographer-who-obscures-the-victims/#sthash.YNCNbCtI.dpuf
The
elderly Koudelka has reached a point in his career and his life where
one might have hoped that he would not have to worry too much about
contradicting dominant narratives (i.e. myths) or about damaging his
reputation. But it seems saying critical things about Israel, rather
than just showing them, is career-death even for someone like Koudelka.
Instead he starts the interview observing that he had always before
avoided visiting the “holy land” and finally came under pressure and
with great reluctance: “I don’t want to get mixed up with Israel because
it’s very, very complicated”. - See more at:
http://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2013-11-19/a-photographer-who-obscures-the-victims/#sthash.YNCNbCtI.dpuf
A photographer who obscures the victims
A photographer who obscures the victims
Such an insistence on total capitulation is characteristic of
hard-liners in conflicts like this, and I confess I rarely understand
the mentality behind it. In some cases the motivation behind making
demands so onerous that the opponent cannot possibly grant them is
clear: the hard-liner wants to provoke an armed conflict which he thinks
he can win, and a compromise solution might forestall the war. This was
the case, for example, with the demands America made of Saddam Hussein
in the run-up to the Iraq war. In other cases, the motivation is
different: the hard-liner understands that his internal political power
within his own country is reinforced by the conflict, even if (perhaps
especially if) his side appears to be losing, so he makes demands that
ensure conflict will continue. This is the case with Hamas's refusal to
recognise Israel's right to exist. A final possibility is that the
hard-liner is delusional, and actually believes that insistence on
maximalist demands will lead to the surrender or collapse of the other side.
'Iran in final stage of production of nuclear bomb:'
There is a widely accepted belief that United Nations General Assembly
Resolution 181 “created” Israel, based upon an understanding that this
resolution partitioned Palestine or otherwise conferred legal authority
or legitimacy to the declaration of the existence of the state of
Israel. However, despite its popularity, this belief has no basis in
fact, as a review of the resolution’s history and examination of legal
principles demonstrates incontrovertibly.
