Book Release – The Weaponized Camera in the Middle East: Videography, Aesthetics, and Politics in Israel and Palestine by Liat Berdugo

https://www.liatberdugo.com/work/weaponized-camera

Book, 272pp., Bloomsbury / I.B. Tauris Imprint, 2021.
Release date: January 28, 2020 — now available for pre-order directly from Bloomsbury.

Description

Drawing on unprecedented access to the video archives of B’Tselem, an Israeli NGO that distributes cameras to Palestinians living in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, The Weaponized Camera lays out an argument for a visual studies approach to videographic evidence in Israel and Palestine. Using video stills as core material, it discusses the politics of videographic evidence in Israel and Palestine by demonstrating that the conflict is one that has produced an inequality of visual rights. The book highlights visual surveillance and counter surveillance at the citizen level, how Palestinians originally filmed to “shoot back” at Israelis, who were armed with shooting power via weapons as the occupying force. It also traces how Israeli private citizens began filming back at Palestinians with their own cameras, including personal cell phone cameras, thus creating a simultaneous, echoing counter surveillance.

Complicating the notion that visual evidence alone can secure justice, the Weaponized Camera in The Middle East asks how what is seen, but also who is seeing, affects how conflicts are visually recorded. Drawing on over 5,000 hours of footage, only a fraction of which is easily accessible to the public domain, this book offers a unique perspective on the strategies and battlegrounds of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Preview

Read the book’s introduction here>>

Availability

Order from Bloomsbury** >>
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**use discount code GLR BN3 for 35% off