The Selfie of Extermination

A vision of horror emerges from this photograph.

Taken by Tsafrir Abayov on February 19, 2024, it shows a group of female Israeli soldiers taking a selfie in front of the macabre rubble of a pulverized neighborhood in the Gaza Strip.

On his Instagram page, the photographer didn't specify the exact location of the shot. But thanks to his “neutral” presentation of this extraordinarily violent image, we know it came from northern Gaza. He hashtagged it, used Israeli military terminology, referred to the "gendered" identity of military personnel, and, of course, specified his camera type, lens size, and sensitivity level.

The absence of a location on this photo, and on another equally gruesome series that followed in the same photographer's album, is likely related to Israeli army censorship orders. It may also be due to negligence on his part. Finally, it may be that the scale of destruction in Gaza is such that taking a selfie in front of the ruins of its cities and refugee camps has the same connotation and meaning: "We photograph and smile for the lens, revealing what we have done to the places and houses. All that remains are the ghosts of those who disappeared after a massacre or deportation”.

An image of absence

Before discussing the ten female soldiers in the foreground, it should be said that this photograph is first and foremost a testimony of destruction and absence.

The destruction of the houses visible in the background, their furniture and mirrors, children's toys and the secrets kept under their doors or the holes in their walls.

The absence of the people who were displaced to tents in Rafah or killed, including perhaps those still buried under the rubble.

Incidentally, these ruins and what they symbolize are the main reason for the soldiers' decision to stop and take a selfie, and for the photographer's decision to immortalize the moment.

In other words, in reverse order, there's the photographer of the whole scene, the soldiers taking selfies, and then the background, with the ruins serving as a frame for both. A setting stripped of the people who have been eliminated by execution or forced displacement.

It is likely that neither the soldiers nor their photographer, who allowed us to discover the "private" selfie, were aware that it is to destruction that we are referred as witnesses of this photo-document, which immediately raises questions about the fate of the absent. It's not the faces of the soldiers, their body movements in celebration of their selfie, their efforts to bend and pose in the right frame, or the hand holding the phone that will remain in our memory. It's even less the "talent" of the photographer, his lens and filters, the angle he used, the zoom he chose, the color tone he adopted, and the "focus" he wanted on the female soldiers in the center.

Destruction and absence are the horizon and the present of this image. The ten female soldiers with their green uniforms, rifles, helmets and bulletproof vests are passing by as if on a walk or a recreational outing after another mission in which they or other colleagues may have participated. A mission to annihilate as many inhabitants of the devastated zone as possible.

The image and the imaginary of colonization

Beyond the moment, this image is highly characteristic of the Israeli occupation and colonization.

If the "selfie" had been invented in 1948 or 1967 (or 1982), we'd have seen thousands like this one, celebrating the destruction and depopulation of cities. It's as if the goal of photography in such a context, like that of occupation and colonization, is to settle in space and occupy it for as long as possible. It's as if it's about celebrating the physical annihilation of the "other" and capturing the next moment so that it becomes eternal. So it is with the colonization that follows the military occupation. It perpetuates the invasion and gives it the leisure to impose itself over time in this devastated, plundered and repopulated (by the colonizers) space.

Moreover, when the ten "selfie-girls" who walk through this place proudly display their military uniforms to show us the extermination of the "enemy" carried out by their army, they compete in savagery with their male comrades-in-arms who enter Gazan homes to steal what has survived the bombs, fires, and bulldozers. Indeed, in many of the images, they show their loot in the form of precious personal belongings of Palestinians who have been murdered or driven from their places.

This equivalence in brutality has nothing to do with the "equality" that feminists advocate. It does not even contribute to the caricatured stereotypes in the West about the brave women who join the Israeli army. It's simply an obscene, crude imitation of violent, hateful, base male behavior, combined with the narcissism expressed by a selfie, which can be described as a "genocidal selfie”.

The negative of the photo or the lost scene

But if this photo had been taken in the same place six months ago, one year ago, or two years ago, it would most likely show young men and women from Gaza hanging laundry, going shopping, on their way to school or university, or old people sitting in front of their houses. Houses still standing in their beauty or ugliness, their colors changing according to the sunny days or the rainy days that drench their facades and spill into the narrow, crowded alleys.

The same image, seen from this position, could have captured last summer children holding the strings of the shimmering kites that soar high above this besieged land, or teenagers running after a ball to celebrate a goal, imitating Messi, Cristiano or Benzema, like millions of children around the world.

Such photographs may probably exist, but we don't notice them because they are so ordinary and banal.

Today, we look at an Israeli picture and witness the unprecedented violence that has spilled out of its frame, the violence that has devastated the homes of the missing and their belongings.

We are spectators of what Israeli soldiers saw and decided to immortalize, which a photographer in turn captured and cynically turned into a product for a news agency.

Published on his Instagram account, these infamous images are commented on by passers-by like him, before going on with their lives, like us, “waiting” for new tragic photos to arrive again and again...

Ziad Majed