Screen Shots: State Violence on Camera in Israel and Palestine

In this book talk, Rebecca Stein draws on her decades long ethnographic work about the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and analyzes how Palestinians, Israeli human rights activists, and the Israeli military turn to images and footage captured on camera to promote their conflicting political agendas.

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The book is an overall critique of techno-optimism, the expectation that advanced technologies can solve socio-political problems. Stein develops a very powerful framework of “failure” as she ethnographically and historically traces the roots of techno-optimism embraced by not only human rights activists critiquing the occupation but also Israeli state and the military.