[Commlist] new book on citizen videography in Israel and Palestine

Liat Berdugo is excited to announce that a new book, */The Weaponized 
Camera in the Middle East: Videography, Aesthetics, and Politics in 
Israel and Palestine/*, has just been published by Bloomsbury / 
I.B.Tauris Imprint. The book is available as a hardback or e-book at: 
https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/the-weaponized-camera-in-the-middle-east-9781838602710/ 
<https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/the-weaponized-camera-in-the-middle-east-9781838602710/> 
(individuals may use discount code GLR BN3 for 35% off).

This book will be of interest to scholars of media studies, visual 
culture, human rights, citizen communication initiatives, human rights, 
surveillance studies and middle east studies. Thank you for circulating 
this information to your networks.


*Book description:*
Drawing on unprecedented access to the video archives of B'Tselem, an 
Israeli NGO that distributes cameras to Palestinians living in the West 
Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, /The Weaponized Camera/ lays 
out an argument for a visual studies approach to videographic evidence 
in Israel and Palestine. Using video stills as core material, it 
discusses the politics of videographic evidence in Israel and Palestine 
by demonstrating that the conflict is one that has produced an 
inequality of visual rights. The book highlights visual surveillance and 
counter surveillance at the citizen level, how Palestinians originally 
filmed to “shoot back” at Israelis, who were armed with shooting power 
via weapons as the occupying force. It also traces how Israeli private 
citizens began filming back at Palestinians with their own cameras, 
including personal cell phone cameras, thus creating a simultaneous, 
echoing counter surveillance.

Complicating the notion that visual evidence alone can secure justice, 
/The/ /Weaponized Camera in The Middle East/ asks how what is seen, but 
also who is seeing, affects how conflicts are visually recorded. Drawing 
on over 5,000 hours of footage, only a fraction of which is easily 
accessible to the public domain, this book offers a unique perspective 
on the strategies and battlegrounds of the Israel-Palestine conflict.


*Book endorsements:*
“After viewing thousands of hours of citizen-made video from the 
B'Tselem Camera Project archive, Liat Berdugo has written a complex and 
moving study of the Palestinian struggle for visibility and 
self-representation in the face of overwhelming Israeli military and 
media domination. Through a series of case studies, the book analyzes 
the different ways the video camera has been used by Palestinians and 
other media activists to counter the visual dominance of the Israeli 
regime. Meticulously researched and theoretically informed, it adds 
significantly to the study of grassroots activist media practices and 
the counter-tactics of visual representation when the camera has become 
weaponized." – Jeffrey Skoller, Film & Media Studies, University of 
California, Berkeley, USA

“Berdugo's entrance into the B'Tselem audio-visual archive is a passage 
into a thick forest of gazes, lenses and bullets, where vision is often 
impaired, and darkness prevails. But from this obscure night, Berdugo 
brilliantly proposes a taxonomy of cameras that illuminates new ways out 
of the political impasse that renders the violence in Israel-Palestine 
both spectacularly visible and systematically concealed. Extracting 
moments and fragments from the B'Tselem archive, Berdugo exposes yet 
another 'order of things', wherein cameras emancipate and shield 
inasmuch as they are wielded as weapons.” – Daniel Mann, King's College 
London, UK


*Book events:*
Feb 9, 2021 at 5:30pm PST — Virtual book launch hosted by San 
Francisco’s Booksmith and The Bindery. The event is free and open to the 
public, but RSVP is required 
<https://app.gopassage.com/events/liat-berdugo/>!

Feb 25, 2021 at 5pm PST — OF CONSEQUENCE, a conversation between me and 
writer/scholar Linda Dittmar about the book hosted by Consequence, an 
international literary journal focused on the experiences of conflict 
and geopolitical violence. This event is free and open to the public, 
but RSVP is required 
<https://www.eventbrite.com/e/of-consequence-featuring-liat-berdugo-and-linda-dittmar-tickets-138668405935>!


*About the author:*
Liat Berdugo is Assistant Professor in Art and Architecture at the 
University of San Francisco. She is also an artist, writer and curator 
and has exhibited in galleries and festivals nationally and 
internationally. Her work has won several awards, including fellowships 
at the Hambidge Center, the Vermont Studio center, and a year-long 
residency in Tel Aviv, Israel, through the Dorot Foundation. More at 
www.liatberdugo.com <http://www.liatberdugo.com>.

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