Israel/Palestine

Northridge quake.

When I could finally get through to my parents on the East Coast, they were both convinced Los Angeles was severely damaged. They saw pictures of collapsed overpasses, many, many buildings that were collapsed. It was all devastation.

They asked how campus weathered the earthquake--surely many buildings are rubble. Kinsey Hall, I said, had a crack in the wall--but it was unreinforced clay hollow bricks. And some plaster fell in some places in Bunche. Otherwise, no biggie. And as for the rest of the devastation, if they looked closely they'd notice that the many, many collapsed overpasses was one from many angles, and the miles of rubble turned out to be mostly one one or two blocks.

Cameras mislead. Even drone footage can mislead. Even if it's 100% accurate, it plays off our assumptions. So one photo of a grieving mother whose son died in Afghanistan was heart-rending--a mother, head bowed, on a cold, rainy day, kneeling by her son's tombstone, wracked by grief. Photo got published all over the place. Until somebody published the full Getty photo, which showed the catering truck, the buffet table, the tv trucks and various cars on the road just to the left and right (but not in the shot), the dozen photographers and the half dozen videographers forming a half-circle around her, a half dozen boom mics inches above her head to record her sobs. Except that all the close ups carefully missed all that--so while the scene was completely real, it was also completely staged, planned, advertised ahead of time.

Since then, when I see a photograph showing something and I'm expected to generalize, I always wonder what we'd see if the photographer zoomed out a bit.

Think critically.

So I saw one bit of video showing that Gazan was a moonscape. It showed some buildings thoroughly trashed. But in the background were several streets in which the buildings weren't even covered in dust. Gaza is moonscaped in places, not much trashed in others. Some is due to where Hamas tunnels or men or suspected weapons were located, some is due to the error that all flesh is prone to; some of that error is mistargeted or errant Israeli munitions, some is due to errant or mistargeted Hamas/IJ/etc. weapons. (It's estimated that 12-20% of the missiles launched towards Israel land in Gaza--granted, some of the area is field, farmland, but when they're trying to target Israeli positions deep inside Gaza, even if they hit their target they're hitting Gaza, and if they miss their target it's just random Gazan deaths added to those killed by Israel Hamas.