Irish Network for Middle Eastern and North African Studies

Israeli tactics to deter Palestinian journalists from doing their work include imprisonment, fines, beatings, house arrests, and live fire. The targeting of Shireen Abu Akleh, a well-known media personality, signals an escalation in attacks by Israel on journalists attempting to expose the full detail of its decades-long occupation. by Claudia Saba  Veteran Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh (Photo: Creative Commons) On 11 May 2022, veteran reporter Shireen Abu Akleh, was shot in the head while covering an Israeli military raid by elite commando unit Duvdevan , near Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank. Her colleague, ​​Ali al-Samoudi, was also shot but survived. Witnesses at the scene maintain that the shots came from Israeli forces. Footage, photographs, and geolocation data have pointed to an Israeli convoy as the source of the bullets that killed Shireen and injured her colleague. Investigations by the New York Times , The Washington Post , CNN , Bellingcat , and the UN Hu...

  By Natasha Remoundou This blog article explores the ways technological media of vertical and oblique war photography and military surveillance are captured in contemporary Irish poetry to open up discussions about the Western 'gaze', ways of 'seeing'/'mapping', mobility, and conflict in the Middle East. In the photographic series ‘Heat Maps’, Irish conceptual documentary photographer Richard Mosse documents a digital atlas that archives forced mobility across the globe while capturing in film a haunting parallel journey between spectators and those that remain ‘unseen’ from above and afar. By means of repurposing military surveillance technology, Mosse uses vertical and oblique mid-wave infrared camera techniques, commonly used to detect and track criminals, to photograph humans in states of exception and landscapes in ruins. The specific use of this apparatus of visual surveillance assembles the transcontinental trails of migrants from Africa and the Persia...