Since October 7, tens, even hundreds of thousands of photographs—often small in size—have been displayed on the walls of bus shelters, kiosks, train stations, and other public spaces throughout Israel. In short, they have invaded the entire public sphere. It is impossible to escape these faces: those of the victims of the massacre, the missing, and the hostages, accompanied by a phrase attributed to them posthumously.
Nothing could be more natural than this desire to pay tribute to loved ones or to share the pain of their loss. Traumatized, the Israeli population is thus seeking to come to terms with what was undoubtedly one of the most dramatic events in the country’s history. Quickly, the portraits of the hostages took center stage, often gathered on a single panel, like a tragic iconostasis. These panels, accompanied by the inscription “Bring them home now,” became the rallying cry of a society for which it is unthinkable to abandon a soldier or civilian in the hands of the enemy. It is in a square opposite the Tel Aviv Museum of Contemporary Art—also adjacent to the city’s main library—renamed for the occasion “Hostage Square” and now the main site of protest against the continuation of the war, that the density of these portraits of the absent takes on its full significance.
The proximity of the museum— which remained closed for a long period after October 7— a place dedicated to other types of images, creates a strange contrast with the sudden rupture introduced by these new faces, which now capture the attention of passersby. In addition, for many months, the “Place des Otages” has been occupied by improvised monuments, touching in their awkwardness. Their creators, often anonymous, avoid any form of sophistication and address the many visitors who pass through this place of remembrance directly. The same images are repeatedly broadcast in the media—television, newspapers, social networks—to prevent the fate of the victims from sinking into oblivion. Yet these media seem to suffer from a blind spot: that of the civilian victims on the other side, who remain invisible—except, sometimes, in the Haaretz newspaper or on Channel 13. The few attempts to break this blindness have been thwarted, as foreign journalists are not allowed to do their job. Even more seriously, Israeli journalists admitted to Gaza only have access to Hamas-related activities, mainly tunnels and weapons depots. Whether intentionally or not, these reports help justify the prolongation of a conflict of unprecedented violence. The rare appearances of Palestinians on screen are limited to moving crowds, without ever focusing on the suffering of any particular individual. Everything suggests that these images could undermine the certainty that the armed conflict must continue despite the “collateral damage.” This filtering is undoubtedly explained by a reflex of national solidarity and the need to repress an unbearable reality. One need only listen to Eli Bar-Navi, former Israeli ambassador to France and a fervent advocate of lasting peace in the Middle East, who says he understands that Israelis mourn their compatriots first and foremost. Nevertheless, it is difficult to accept such invisibility, such denial, in a society that proudly claims to be humanist.
This situation is not new. For a long time, the image of the Palestinian has been virtually absent from the Jewish public eye in Israel. Having become a threat, he is no longer represented as a real individual. Almost never named, endowed with a collective character, he embodies the existential terror that grips the Jewish protagonist and prevents him from living his life as he would have wished. There are exceptions, however, particularly when artists seek to confront the public with this history by using so-called “objective” documents: photographs, maps, newspapers, etc. In November 2003, for example, an exhibition at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem showed the works of David Reeb, based on photographs taken in the territories by Michael Kratzman and Alex Levac. Using these images, Reeb created large-format, realistic paintings, true life-size depictions of a tragic reality and its characters. Isolated by walls, these works sometimes formed a fragmented storyboard, a mosaic juxtaposing two realities that coexist without really seeing each other. Without detail, without precision, without illusionistic virtuosity, they seem, despite their size, painted in haste, hot, in a palpable urgency, like sketches made — if we dare say — on the motif. These are images of a prosaic reality, which the Israeli public does not see. Isolated, enlarged, extracted from their media context and projected into the artistic space, retouched by the artist who leaves visible traces of pictorial material, they acquire an improvised quality, almost clumsy. Reeb’s work is a reminder that in a society in conflict, while everything may be visible, not everything can be shown-let alone seen. He also points out that this partial blindness, or form of autism developed by Israeli society, is no longer tenable when it comes to Palestinian society. The difference is simple but crucial: when the occupied person constantly sees the occupation — because it determines and encloses his living space without alternative — the occupant, on the other hand, strives to obliterate any visible sign of this occupation, adopting an attitude that allows him to pretend that it does not exist or, at least, to ignore it. The expression camera obscura makes sense here, and it is no coincidence that another exhibition of Reeb organized in Tel-Aviv bore this title. To put it bluntly: these are works created under occupation. Let’s be just : this visual imbalance is not the preserve of the Israeli media. The representation of the Israeli, even the Jew, in the Arab media is hardly better. Perhaps one day a Palestinian art historian will, in turn, take a critical look at his people’s representation of the “other”. Perhaps one day the Palestinians will accept that some among the Israelis look at them without hatred.