Searching for an undisputed fact in the media surrounding the Israel/Palestine conflict inevitably leads to defeat. At this point party positions are so entrenched and divergent that not even issues like primary education or access to drinking water–usually considered to be human rights–are left untouched.

And as we discussed, words are easy to manipulate; a strong writer can use her skill to clandestinely persuade a reader to adopt an opinion with little reliance on the facts she presents. Or, facts can be presented and reinterpreted and unintentionally adjusted to better fit a certain narrative. Either way, the potential pitfalls of relying on information that is written and translated and analyzed and summarized, etc. etc, are many. This is apparent with regards to the Israel/Palestine debate to anyone who reads about the issue in Fox and then Haaretz and then Al Jazeera.

Imagery, conversely, can carry a higher degree of credibility with regards to supporting the “fact”. As such, activists in Israel and the Occupied Territories (check out B’tselem, for example) are increasingly relying on photography and film to capture breaches of law perpetrated by the opposite side. But while such testaments to recording the real truth are admirable, I have found that in this context as in any other, imagery can also be manipulated. In particular, lack of context and omission of important relevant information–as opposed to simply presenting wrong or false data–are serious offenders.

As such, for this assignment I will analyze two short clips–one from an Israeli perspective and another from a Palestinian one–to illustrate how lack of image context can radically warp the projection’s significance.