Samar Abu Elouf, a Palestinian photographer, captured the image Mahmoud Ajjour, Aged Nine, which was published last year for The New York Times, in this month and won the 2025 World Press Photo of the Year award.
Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, where at least 52, 365 Palestinians have been killed since October 2023, resulted in Ajjour’s death, with both of his arms falling off. Although the boy’s head and armless torso are partially obscured in the award-winning photo, his emptiness is still evident in his eyes.
Ajjour, who recently spoke to Al Jazeera, recalls how he felt when his mother informed him that he had lost his arms: “I started crying. My mental state and I were very depressed. Due to Israel’s criminal blockade of medical supplies and all other supplies essential for human survival, he was then forced to undergo surgery without an anaesthetic, a practice that has always been practiced in Gaza. I screamed loudly because I couldn’t bear the pain. The hallways were filled with my voice.
How will I be able to hug you, the child’s mother asked, according to Abu Elouf.
Abu Elouf’s portrayal of Ajjour captures the cataclysmic suffering Israel has inflicted on the children of the Gaza Strip with the full support of the United States. The UN Children’s Fund reported that some 1, 000 children in Gaza had already lost one or both legs just two months after the genocidal assault began in mid-December 2023.
Fast forward to the present day and the UN’s warning that besieged territory was causing at least 100 children’s deaths or injuries every day. How many pictures do you need to depict a genocide, though, according to legend, a picture is worth a thousand words?
Today, April 30 marks the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, another bloody historical occurrence in which the United States played a significant role in the massacre that continues apace in Gaza. Kim Phuc, a nine-year-old girl who was killed in a US-supplied napalm attack outside the South Vietnamese village of Trang Bang in June 1972, also served as the face and body of that conflict.
The now-famous image of Phuc was captured by Vietnamese photographer Nick Ut as she ran naked down the street in the aftermath of the apocalyptic apocalypse, her skin scorched, and her face pictured in agony. The photo, which is sometimes referred to as The Terror of War as “Napalm Girl,” won the 1973 World Press Photo of the Year award.
In an interview with CNN about the photograph’s 50th anniversary in 2022, Phuc recalled the incident: “Unexpectedly, there was the fire everywhere, and my clothes were burned up by the fire. I still remember what I thought. I pondered, “Oh my goodness, I got burned, I’ll be ugly, and people will see me] differently.”
In any remotely civilized world, it should be obvious that any child or adult must endure this, whether physically or psychologically. After being hospitalized for 14 months, Phuc continued to experience excruciating pain, suicidal thoughts, and shame over having her naked and mutilated body exposed for public viewing.
Napalm was only one of many tools in a US-backed toolkit that included human body incineration and other disfigurement techniques to protect the planet from capitalism. The millions of tonnes of ammunition that the US dropped on Vietnam during the war have still left them with the death toll.
Half a century after the end of the war, Agent Orange, a lethal defoliant, was used by the US to swathe vast areas of Vietnam.
The late American author Susan Sontag argued that the purpose of images like those that appeared on the front pages of the world’s newspapers in 1972, including a naked South Vietnamese child sprayed by American soldiers and running down a highway with her arms open, screaming in pain, likely contributed to the public’s disgust with the war than the ten hours of televised barbarities.
Despite Ut’s publication of his photo, US-backed barbarisms in Vietnam continued for three more years. The fact that nearly every image from the Gaza Strip could be labeled The Terror of War just proves that barbarism is still raging at its best.
The desensitizing effect on the public cannot be understated in the current era of social media, where both still images and videos are reduced to flashy visuals for instant consumption, even when it’s talking about nine-year-old children who have both of their arms blown off.
Abu Elouf stated in an Instagram post on April 18: “I always have, and still do, wish to capture the photo that would stop this war, – that would stop the killing, the death, the starvation.”
What is the value of a photo, she continued, “But if our photos can’t stop all this tragedy and horror, then what’s the point? What image do you need to see to understand what’s happening in Gaza?
What, in the end, is the worth of an opinion article, on that depressing note?
