Video Vortex Reader II: moving images beyond YouTube

286 Video Vortex Reader II Moving Images Beyond Youtubepolitics & human rights287Our work since 1992 has focused on how best to enable human rights defenders touse video in their advocacy and activism, and has integrated training and intensivesupport to local groups on their campaigns, as well as developing multimedia platformsfor informed dissemination of human rights media. Along the way we have learned thatthe technology in itself is insufficient in the absence of the capacity to film capably – orto tell stories effectively with the resulting material. Without technical training you canshoot raw video, but you cannot create the finished narratives that are of value in mostadvocacy contexts ... We have seen that “seeing is believing” does not necessarily applyin all instances, and that nuanced storytelling and incorporation of video into otheradvocacy strategies often produces the most effective results. 7As Gregory writes, the ‘potential presence of a camera in every concerned citizen’s hand createspowerful opportunities for the future of human rights video and human rights advocacy.At the same time, it raises significant questions of agency, action and audience’. 8 In fact,it could be argued that what Gregory really presents is ‘evidence journalism’ rather than ‘witnessjournalism’. After all, the apparatus of the digital video camera witnesses an event onlyto the extent that it can as a mechanical recording device. It cannot bear witness in the publicspace of forensic argument. As Derrida once claimed, judges, tribunals, and other arbiters ofjustice need those who attest to their own self-interested and singular presence at an eventin order to participate in deliberation.In the series of videos that were released on May 31, 2010, the IDF seems to be methodicallypresenting a legal case composed of a sequence of evidentiary moments. ‘Israeli NavyAddresses a Ship in the Flotilla and Offers it to Dock in the Ashdod Port’ 9 shows a militaryofficer advising passengers of their legal rights and obligations. He speaks in English, andsubtitles are appended to the video to make the official statement clear:Mavi Marmara, you are approaching an area of hostility which is under a naval blockade.The Gaza area, coastal region and Gaza harbor are closed to all maritime traffic.The Israeli government supports delivery of humanitarian supplies to the civilian populationin the Gaza Strip and invites you to enter the Ashdod Port. Delivery of the suppliesin accordance with the authority’s regulations will be through the formal land crossingsand under your observation, after which, you can return to your home ports aboard thevessels on which you arrived.To this hyper-rational legalistic discourse, the Mavi Marmara responds, ‘Negative, negative.Our destination is Gaza’. The video ends with this brief, contradictory reply.7. Sam Gregory, ‘Cameras Everywhere: Ubiquitous Video Documentation of Human Rights, NewForms of Video Advocacy, and Considerations of Safety, Security, Dignity and Consent’, Journal ofHuman Rights Practice 2.2 (2010). Sam Gregory’s text is also published in this reader.8. Gregory, ‘Cameras Everywhere’, p. 5.9. ‘Israeli Navy Addresses a Ship in the Flotilla and Offers it to Dock in the Ashdod Port’, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKOmLP4yHb4&feature=youtube_gdata_player.Later in the sequence of the May 31 st YouTube videos, the IDF released a video entitled‘Weapons Found on the Flotilla Ship Mavi Marmara Used by Activists Against IDF Soldiers’. 10The explanatory caption claims that the video will show a ‘cache of weapons including manyknives, slingshots, rocks, smoke bombs, metal rods, improvised sharp metal objects, sticksand clubs, 5KG hammers, firebombs and gas masks’, but the first piece of evidence shown inthe video is a large pile of keffiyeh, traditional Arab headdresses that have become associatedwith the Intifada in the visual rhetoric of the Israeli government and its Western military allies.In the next shot, a crate of smoke torches is shown, but in the background the viewer canclearly see packages of water. This is followed by a confusing mass of slingshots and then twoplastic bottles filled with stones. Toward the end of the video there are the types of weaponsdisplays that a television viewer might associate with the successful ‘bust’ of a criminal enterprise:arrays of pipes, bats, and knives that are neatly lined up atop a green Hamas flag. In theYouTube video ‘Footage from the Mavi Marmara Including Injured Soldiers and Items FoundOn Board’, 11 the jumble of detritus includes bags of marbles, which are part of the rhetoricalcase presented. The faces of the injured Israeli soldiers are not visible; their wounds appearas more evidence to support the case presented by the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit on YouTube.The final video in the May 31 st series seems to provide testimony rather than evidence tobolster the IDF case. However the face of the witness in ‘Israeli Navy Soldier Describes theViolent Mob Aboard Mavi Marmara’ 12 is obscured by digital blurring, and thus the viewersattention might naturally go to his broken arm in a sling, which provides evidence of his injury.It is worth noting that although other videos dispassionately describe the ship’s passengers as‘demonstrators’ or ‘activists’, this video characterizes them as a ‘violent mob’. In an article inThe New York Times, ‘Videos Carry On the Fight Over Sea Raid’, the newspaper observes thatthe rhetorical retaliation escalated in succeeding days. 13 In this ‘fight’, the Israelis quickly lostpolitical capital: the mere fact of having so apparently edited the footage called its authenticityinto doubt, and the Israeli commandos who stormed the Mavi Marmara seized digital photosand videos created by witnesses from the other side.What is also striking is that many of the videos either use moving images alone, or only featuresound, which draws attention to the lack of sound synchronization in many of the IDF MaviMarmara videos. By June 4 th the IDF was actually posting a still photograph of the Israeli militaryperson previously shown notifying passengers that they could peacefully deliver the suppliesby land if they complied with his nautical orders. In the new version the still is mashedup with inflammatory dialogue supposedly from the Mavi Marmara. An unlikely assortment10. ‘Weapons Found on the Flotilla Ship Mavi Marmara Used by Activists Against IDF Soldiers’,http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvS9PXZ3RWM&.11. ‘Footage from the Mavi Marmara Including Injured Soldiers and Items Found On Board’, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aN3vIT2uh_U.12. ‘Israeli Navy Soldier Describes the Violent Mob Aboard Mavi Marmara’, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9p5QT91QYs.13. Brian Stelter, ‘Videos Carry On the Fight Over Sea Raid’, The New York Times, June 1 2010, sec.World / Middle East, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/02/world/middleeast/02media.html?_r=2&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1284832821-QIx62AT77LxfPB2eYFomEw.