This month, Palestinian photographer Samar Abu Elouf won the photo of the year of the year 2025 for his image entitled Mahmoud Ajjour, nine, taken last year for the New York Times.
Ajjour has exploded his two arms by an Israeli strike on the Gaza Strip, where the current genocide in Israel has now killed at least 52,365 Palestinians since October 2023. In the award -winning photography, the boy’s head and without arm tors are thrown in the partial shadow, his gaze which has not been intense in his implicity.
Speaking recently in Tel Aviv Tribune, Ajjour recalled his reaction when his mother informed him that he had lost his arms: “I started to cry. I was very sad and that my mental state was very bad.” It was then forced to undergo surgery without anesthesia, an arrangement which was normal for the course in Gaza due to the criminal blocking of Israel of medical supplies and all the other materials necessary for human survival. “I couldn’t endure the pain, I was screaming very hard. My voice filled the corridors. “
According to Abu Elouf, the first tortured question that the child asked his mother was: “How can I kiss you?”
Admittedly, the portrait of Abu Elouf de Ajjour sums up the cataclysmic suffering that Israel has inflicted – with the full support of the United States – on the children of the Gaza Strip. In mid-December 2023, just two months after the launch of the genocidal assault, the United Nations children’s funds reported that some 1,000 children in Gaza had already lost one or both legs.
Quick advance until the present moment and the UN warning in early April, that at least 100 children were killed or injured daily in the besieged territory. They say that an image is worth a thousand words – but how many images are necessary to represent the genocide?
Meanwhile, while slaughter takes place tirelessly in Gaza, today – on April 30 – marks the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, another bloody historical episode in which the United States played a disproportionate role in mass murder. In this case, a nine -year -old child has also become the face – and the body – of this war: Kim Phuc, victim of a napalm attack provided in the United States outside the South Vietnamese village of Trang Bang in June 1972.
Nick Ut, a Vietnamese photographer from the Associated Press, broke the now iconic image of Phuc while she was running naked on the road, her burnt skin and her face the image of apocalyptic agony. The photo, which is officially titled The Terror of War but is often known instead under the name of Napalm Girl, won the World Press Photo of the Year Prize in 1973.
In an interview with CNN on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of photography in 2022, Phuc thought at the time of the attack: “(s) Uddenly, there was fire everywhere, and my clothes were burned by fire … I always remember what I thought. I thought: “ Oh my God, I have been burned, I will be useful, and people will see me (in a) different way ”.
This, of course, is nothing that a child or an adult should have to bear – physically or psychologically – in a world of civilized distance. After spending 14 months in the hospital, Phuc continued to suffer from extreme pain, suicidal thoughts and shame to have the photo of his naked and mutilated body exposed to all.
And yet, napalm was only one of the many weapons in a toolbox supported by the United States designed to make the planet safe for capitalism by incinerating and distressing human bodies otherwise. To date, the Vietnamese are mutilated and killed by the unplodced remains of millions of tonnes of ammunition that the United States abandoned on the country during the war.
The deadly orange defoliant agent that the United States has used to saturate the expanses of Vietnam, also remains responsible for all kinds of invalidating congenital malformations and the death of half a century after the end of the war.
In his 1977 book on photography, the American writer of the late Susan Sontag considered the function of images as those of the UT: “Photographs like that which made the first page of most newspapers in the world in 1972 – a naked southern child child has just vaporized by the American Napaume, going down a highway towards the camera, his open arms, probably more public revulsions against war that hours of television barriers.
Aside from the repulsion of the public, of course, the barbarities supported by the United States in Vietnam lasted three years after UT published his photo. Now, the fact that almost every image of the Gaza Strip could be labeled the terror of war simply confirms that barbarism is always a quick business.
And in the current social media era, in which fixed images and videos are reduced to fast shooting visuals for momentary consumption, the desensitizing effect on the public cannot be underestimated – even when we speak of nine years with their two weapons that have been destroyed.
In an Instagram article on April 18, Abu Elouf wrote: “I always have, and I always wish to capture the photo that would stop this war – which would stop murder, death, famine.”
She continued by pleading: “But if our photos cannot stop all this tragedy and this horror, then what is the value of a photo? What is the image you expect to see to understand what is happening inside Gaza?”
And on this dark note, I could ask a similar question: what is the value of an opinion article?
The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Tel Aviv Tribune.
