As Jewish institutional support of pro-Israel positions is showing signs of breaking down, it’s an opportunity to take a critical look at a widely-made claim that Jews have a “historical right” to the land of Israel.
We rely on a journalist to just stand by—it’s a practical act of witness: while you report the story you stand in the presence, neither blinking nor stepping up.
Without the framing device of community, without any context in which to shape the interpretation of the events, such images become simply sensational, the prick of pain without the moral payoff.
After the emotion evoked by the film subsides, sober consideration begins here: why, in the supposedly “post-racial” age of Obama, is there no space in movies to imagine the historical story of African Americans creating the conditions of their own emancipation?
Is it simply a part of the conflicted role of the journalist or does the photo’s work as cultural catharsis ignore the specific agony of the victim’s loved ones?
In the process of doing all they could to defeat Obama, self-proclaimed and media-designated evangelicals discredited their message and reduced it to a mere political gospel.