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STEIN, REBECCA. L. (2021). Screen Shots: State Violence on Camera in Israel and 

Palestine. Stanford University Press, 234 pp., ISBN 978-1-50362-803-8. 

 

Keywords: Palestine; Israel; State Violence; Visual Anthropology;  

During the last seven months, we have been exposed to extremely sensitive content from the 

Gaza Strip. Young Palestinian journalists like Motaz Azaiza, Bisan Owda or Hind Khoudary 

have documented their daily lives amidst the latest Israeli aggression on Gaza, becoming digital 

influencers and attracting millions of new followers. At the same time, a myriad of TikTok 

videos from Israeli soldiers during the ground invasion of Gaza have become viral, awakening 

disparate opinions from social media users. During these months, much has been discussed 

regarding the veracity of pictures from the events of the 7th of October and its aftermath, 

proving that in a narrative war, pictures become weapons.  

This “visual war” is exactly what Rebecca Stein, an American cultural anthropologist and 

Associate Professor of Anthropology at Duke University,  documents in her book, Screen 

Shots: State Violence on Camera in Israel and Palestine. Published in 2021 by Stanford 

University Press, it focuses on the “entanglement of consumer photographic technologies and 

Israeli state violence” (p. 5) during the first two decades of the twenty-first century, a period 

marked by the second intifada and multiple Israeli aggressions on Gaza (2008, 2009, 2014). 

The core focus of the book is Jewish Israeli actors and institutions such as human rights workers 

and activists (paying special attention to the International Information Center for Human Rights 

in The Occupied Territories (B’TSELEM)), the Jewish settler population and the Israeli 

military. However, it also highlights the stories of Palestinian video activists and civilians 

living under occupation.  

The ethnography analyses the changing media landscape in Palestine and Israel by 

incorporating visual devices such as cameras into the daily routine of different political 

constituencies and the attendant challenges. Instead of focusing on the life of pictures after they 



 

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are taken, the book focuses on what precedes their entry into social worlds: “the various forms 

of labour, political and aesthetic assessments, negotiations and contestations, that make images 

and visual circuits possible” (p. 13). Throughout the chapters, Stein answers questions such as: 

How are images used in the Israeli and Palestinian political and legal arenas? What visual 

policies emerge? How do different actors adapt to the new use of cameras and mobile devices? 

In what ways are the images processed and distributed? What strategies are used to 

communicate a specific message through visual evidence? By answering these questions, Stein 

shows how, despite having completely different goals, both Israeli and Palestinian actors use 

visual devices with the aspiration of achieving their political dreams.  

 

Chapter 1 explores military photography in the twenty-first century's first decade and the use 

of private optical devices in the Israeli military arena during the second intifada (2000- 2005), 

the war on Lebanon (2006), and the 2008-2009 assault on the Gaza Strip. Israel uses images to 

document, acquire information, and ensure spatial control in these contexts, becoming 

occupation tools. Stein observes how the camera nature changes from a personal device to a 

wartime actor. In this sense, cameras and cell phones oscillate from personal use and 

occupation technologies, which require special policies and raise new challenges.  

 

Chapter 2 is a “counterpart to the global dreams about digital revolution” (p. 69) and shows the 

experiences and challenges of Palestinian videographers and camera activists in the West Bank 

who collaborated with B’TSELEM between 2000 and 2012. Stein documents the beginnings 

of amateur eyewitness videography and how digital technologies spread through the West 

Bank, paying special attention to the temporal and spatial constraints they faced due to military 

restrictions, settler attacks, technical problems or material confiscation. These struggles 

hindered the arrival of the pictures to Israeli media or human rights organisations.  

 

Chapter 3 explores the credibility of Palestinian visual evidence within Israeli society, 

analysing the appearance of a repudiation script which emerged from the Zionist social margins 

(Israeli settler media outlets and pro-Israeli bloggers in the United States) and has gradually 

been consolidated and normalised, reaching Israeli mainstream Media and even political 

discourses. The Palestinian “fakery” (what some call “Pallywood”) serves as a political tool to 

improve Israe’ls international image, heavily damaged by the violent scenes coming from the 

occupied territories. Stein articulates the connection between colonialism and visual 



 

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authenticity; showing how the repudiation campaigns of videos from Palestine serve as a 

colonial strategy to invalidate the native narrative, this time in the social media era.  

 

Chapter 4 focuses on the work of B’TSELEM’s West Jerusalem office staff, showing what 

precedes the circulation of visual evidence from the Occupied Territories. Through 

ethnographic fieldwork, the chapter explores how human rights defenders watch, analyse and 

distribute the eyewitness videography coming from the West Bank. It also sheds light on the 

discussions within the organisation and the strategies used to appeal to the Israeli audience at 

a time when human rights institutions grew increasingly vilified. The chapter is a good 

opportunity to discover all the labour involved before images are displayed to the world.  

 

Chapter 5 centres on Israeli media policy, exploring how the Israeli military responds to the 

visual evidence from Palestinian video activists and Israeli human rights defenders. Stein 

articulates the chapter through three “hasbara fail” cases and the consequent strategies to win 

empathy from the public audience. These often require military investment in cameras, media 

technologies, photography-trained soldiers, and visual campaigns. Throughout the chapter, we 

approach the Israeli military from a Public Relations perspective, discovering their struggles 

and strategies to adapt to the new digital battlefield.   

 

Screen Shots: State Violence on Camera in Israel and Palestine offers a solid contribution to 

visual anthropology studies in Palestine and Israel from an anti-colonial perspective. Her status 

as an American Jewish researcher allowed her to access a myriad of spaces, from the offices 

of B’TSELEM to the military’s Jerusalem offices, which allows the reader to understand the 

visual goals and aspirations from different perspectives. Even though the book documents 

events that go back up to 20 years ago, the book's content still resonates with what is happening 

today in the Gaza Strip, being a useful tool for analysing the use of visual content around the 

current war.  

 

Neixé Castellano is a PhD researcher at the Department of Social Anthropology at the 

University of Barcelona. She holds a BA in Social and Cultural Anthropology from the 

University of Barcelona and an MA in Arabic and Hebrew Culture from the University of 

Granada. Her current research work focuses on mobilities and tourism in Israel and Palestine.   

 

 



 

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© 2024 Neixé Castellano 


