Where is the Barrage of Ukrainian Atrocity Images?

Dr. Vijay Prashad wonders: Despite outrage for Ukraine exceeding that for genocide in Palestine, why not a similar barrage of viral videos of Ukrainian civilian casualties like those from Gaza?

As the Russian invasion of Ukraine rages on, a glaring absence has emerged amid the torrent of news coverage - the lack of graphic images and videos depicting civilian casualties and urban destruction on the scale witnessed during Israel's assaults on Gaza and the Palestinian territories. While social media has been inundated with footage of missiles, explosions, and military engagements in Ukraine, there appears to be a dearth of the kind of wrenching, visceral imagery that forces the world to confront the brutal realities endured by Palestinian (and increasingly Lebanese) civilians.

Where are the Images of Total Obliteration of human life?

This discrepancy was poignantly highlighted during a recent talk by the Indian activist and scholar Vijay Prashad. Reflecting on the Russian assault, he posed a provocative question:

"Where are the images coming out of Ukraine - where are the pictures of children dying, of entire families being obliterated, of neighborhoods flattened, universities bombed?"

Prashad contrasted this relative absence with the deluge of harrowing visuals that emerged from Gaza during Israel's repeated bombardments, including the 2014 offensive that killed over 2,200 Palestinians, including 551 children. Those images, which lay bare the immense human toll on the Palestinian people, spark global outrage and draw accusations of war crimes against the Israeli military.

His point is not to diminish the suffering and hardship experienced by Ukrainian civilians, which is very real and only intensifying as the invasion grinds on. Rather, it is to shine a light on the apparent discrepancy in how this European conflict has been portrayed compared to Israel's assaults on the Palestinian territories and Gaza in particular.

Jill Stein

Prashad argues this divergence cannot be attributed to logistical factors like media access or the widespread proliferation of camera phones in Gaza compared to Ukraine. In his assessment, more profound forces are at play - the racial, cultural, and geopolitical biases that lead many to perceive Palestinian victims as less "grievable" than Ukrainian civilians.

"This [Israeli onslaught] is not like how the Russians are bombing in Ukraine," he states, noting a "qualitative difference" between the urban annihilation witnessed in Gaza and the seemingly more restrained Russian tactics. "The Russians have not destroyed Ukraine like the Israelis destroyed Palestine."

Prashad's words underscore a harsh reality - that the devastation inflicted by Israel on Palestinian territories has been of a far greater, more indiscriminate and permanence than Russia's assault on Ukraine, at least so far. His statements echo recent criticisms leveled at Jill Stein and others who have tried to equate Putin's actions in Ukraine to Netanyahu's policies toward Gaza. Such equivalencies ignore the vast disparities in scale, duration and totality of civilian suffering caused by Israeli occupation and bombardment of Palestinian lands over decades. While Russia's violence harming civilians cannot be excused, Prashad argues it pales in comparison to the systematic elimination of Palestinian life, land and infrastructure that has constituted what many deem an ongoing genocide.

In essence, Prashad rejects morally equating the two conflicts based on the grossly asymmetric tolls and lasting impacts inflicted on Palestinian civilian society by Israeli forces. His critique cautions against an ahistoric framing that flattens these contextual and proportional differences. Drawing such facile parallels, he implies, is an injustice that fails to truly reckon with the singularly catastrophic plight Palestinians have uniquely endured.

People vs. “Unpeople”

Of course, activists like Prashad have a long history of criticizing what they view as a deeply uneven global response to conflicts based on where they occur (West vs. non-West), who the victims are (Western vs. non-Western), and what they look like (white vs. non-white). The deluge of global sympathy, military aid, and financial support for Ukraine stands in stark contrast to the lack of reaction to Israel's repeated assaults on the Palestinian territories.

However, the lack of visceral atrocity imagery emerging from the Ukrainian war zone is giving particularly potent voice to these chronic concerns about double standards in how people process and prioritize human suffering.

As Prashad contends, part of the issue lies in how the "masters of war" themselves shape dominant narratives. "Policymakers and political rhetoric often disadvantage discriminated and marginalized groups (e.g., Arabs or Muslims) by framing their resistance as unprovoked and driven by hatred," he argues. This enables oppressive measures and perpetuates dehumanizing stereotypes, as evidenced by how Palestinians have frequently been portrayed as irrationally hateful rather than seekers of justice and freedom.

While decrying Russia's invasion of Ukraine as 'criminal', Ukraine's President Zelensky maintains an indefensible double standard - offering full-throated support for Israel's systematic destruction and oppression of Palestine. This image captures the stark hypocrisy of lamenting violence against his own people, while sanctioning and enabling the ethnic cleansing, land theft and bombing of civilians when the victims are Palestinian. Zelensky's laughter alongside Netanyahu lays bare the moral bankruptcy of selectively branding military aggression as 'criminal' based on which population is being displaced and massacred.

Russian assault on Ukraine simply not as brutal

Whether one agrees with Prashad's stance, his observation about the absence of atrocity visuals from Ukraine compared to Gaza should give us pause. Have we allowed racial and cultural biases to drive people’s ability to viscerally relate more strongly to the plight of Ukrainian civilians? Are people unconsciously processing this European war through a different lens because the victims are white?

Again, as Prashad argues, the lack of atrocity imagery emerging from Ukraine is not necessarily due to the realities of its urban combat or the peculiarities of this specific conflict. Rather, he contends the reason we are not seeing the level of devastating civilian impacts captured in places like Gaza is because the Russian assault on Ukraine has simply not risen to that level of brutality against the civilian population and infrastructure. Despite Russia’s obvious ability to do so.

Only Ukraine gets the Treatment of Grand Catastrophe

Prashad directly states "The Russians have not destroyed Ukraine like the Israelis have destroyed Palestine." His observation is that the Russian tactics, while certainly violent, have been more restrained in terms of targeting civilians and decimating civil infrastructure like universities, airports, bakeries and neighborhoods. This stands in stark contrast to Israel's repeated bombings of Gaza, fully supported and enabled by most Western countries, which he describes as "an assault on the Palestinian ability to live."

The dichotomy Prashad highlights is that despite the substantially higher scales of civilian death, urban destruction and human suffering being inflicted on the Palestinians, it is the conflict in Ukraine that is being treated as a grand humanitarian catastrophe by Western nations and media. While the support for Ukraine is certainly amplified due to it being a Western/NATO proxy-war against Russia, for the general population this seeming disparity underscores Prashad's argument about racial double standards and Western biases in how civilian plights are perceived and prioritized based on racial and cultural similarities.

In Prashad's view, the absence of atrocity visuals from Ukraine does not numb us to the reality there, but rather reveals the West's inability and unwillingness to bear full witness to the far greater horrors unfolding in the Palestinian territories. As he states, we must challenge ourselves to empathize equally with all civilians suffering from violence, dispossession and oppression, not just those who look or live more like "us."

- Karim