Vile: AP wins award for photo of Hamas terrorists proudly posing with their ‘kill’ like

In the arts these days, they insist that context is everything.

So what is one to make of this vile picture, of Hamas terrorists from the October 7 massacre proudly posing with their ‘kill’ on the bed of a pickup truck, the mangled, mutilated, body of a 22-year old woman, proudly preening and posing for their trusted photographer from the Associated Press?

Shame on @RJI for awarding @AP ‘Picture of the Year’ award, of this image, which their Hamas-embedded photographer took of Shani Louk, as she was murdered, violated and thrown on back of pick-up truck!

You must be so proud? pic.twitter.com/A9IuDx912g

— Arsen Ostrovsky ????️ (@Ostrov_A) March 28, 2024

I thought lefties didn’t like photographs of big-game hunters posing with their gratuitous kills. Seems there’s an exception now, if the ‘trophy’ is a woman and a Jew.

According to the New York Post:

A sickening image of Hamas terrorists parading a slain woman’s nearly naked body through the streets of Gaza has been awarded a prestigious photo-of-the-year prize — sparking fierce outrage from those who slammed the win as “an outrageous desecration of Jewish life.”

The grim photo featuring Shani Louk’s body was among a collection of 20 images that helped the Associated Press secure first place in one of the Pictures of the Year International award categories earlier this month.

The awards, which are run by the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism, are self-described as the world’s oldest photojournalism competition.

So much for ‘say her name’ as the lefties like to say. Neither AP nor the University of Missouri did that to the helpless murder and probable rape victim.

It’s not just that the picture is vile and ensured that a lot of us turned in favor of Israel completely destroying Hamas.

It’s that the photographer could get that close to the scene of the violence.

Can any old photographer come visit Hamas in Gaza and take pictures like that?

I don’t think so.

Only the most trusted and vetted ones can do that.

Hamas is basically are cartel-like criminal gang that commits heinous crimes, and as a result, trusts no one. I’ve been around people like this, in Indonesia years ago, and they are scary in their distrust of free-press reporters. Russian and Chechen gangsters, too; there’s a kind of electricity around them in everything they say and do that threatens one to ‘stay away.’

How it was that Hamas could come to trust this AP photographer who took the photo unless he was basically one of them? How was it that he could ’embed’ with this group before the went on their murder spree on October 7 to photograph the carnage? He would have had to have had foreknowledge of it before it happened. That leaves a lot of open questions as to what his motives were and who his friends were. Was he there to create the terrorist pornoviolence, to use the term Tom Wolfe used for playing over and over scenes of gratuitous violence for its own sake? We know that Osama bin Laden got his rocks off watching pornoviolence of his own atrocities, as do many dictators. If he knew about this, he’d probably be upset he didn’t think it up himself.

Had Osama bin Laden invited along an Associated Press photographer to photograph up his atrocities, too, would his pals have gotten prestigious journalism awards, too?

We know that Mexican cartels will often carry along trusted photographers for their acts — there used to be websites that I knew about where I’d see videos of graphic violence I never knew could exist – of terrified victims in blindfolds with guns shoved at their temples, of a pickup truck running its tire back and forth over a guy’s head as the brains gushed out. Since those are historic pictures, too, should those photographers, too, get prestigious journalism awards?

And hasn’t the press been most critical of reporters with unorthodox methods, such as James O’Keefe, with his undercover reporting, which is truthful and significant? Like the up-close AP photograph, such things are obtained by unorthodox methods, but they’re certainly something the press won’t give him recognition as a journalist for. Double standards, anyone? And another for the unorthodox pile, Julian Assange, whose claim to journalism is the wholesale publication of stolen secrets? Sure, it’s historical. But it’s not exactly journalism, any more than having a participant in the Hamas attacks get called a journalist and get awards for his ‘output.’

To obtain such a photo, one must be vetted and trusted by some of the world’s worst terrorists:

It is a hugely historically significant photograph, but the photographer was a participant in a terrorist attack.

He was embedded with a unit of jihadists who were slaughtering civilians.

He should win no awards.https://t.co/OS3Aas73L2 pic.twitter.com/hO1oho523B

— John Aziz (@aziz0nomics) March 28, 2024

And Israel has charged that members of the press were actual Hamas members. AP has been accused of sharing office space with Hamas in 2021, too.

AT managing editor Andrea Widburg pointed out the problem with the entire context of this photo:

It’s the difference between awarding a prize to someone who smuggled an important photo out of Auschwitz and to one of the guards in Auschwitz who proudly photographed a day at work.

It can’t be better said than that. Let’s reserve journalism rewards for real journalism.

Image: Twitter screen shot / fair use