If you don’t look too closely you might think the photograph is a dimly lit snapshot from a slumber party or a family camping trip. Six small children lie in a row, their heads poking out from the white sheet that is casually lying across their little chests. None appear to be older than 10, though it is hard to say for sure.
At first, you might not notice the smear of drying blood in the upper right hand corner of the image. But then you do, and then it is impossible not to see that one child, second from the left, appears to be missing a chunk of skull. When you now look with your full attention, the horror of this tableau takes shape, and you see that only one child — a girl with a ponytail, probably 8 or 9 years old — looks even remotely as if she is sleeping. Her head is turned slightly, as if she had been drowsily whispering something to the girl beside her.
Then you might see the terse caption, which reads: “The bodies of children killed in an Israeli strike lie on the floor at the morgue of Al Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on Oct. 22, 2023, as battles continue between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas group.” The caption comes from Agence France-Presse; the photo from Mahmud Hams, a staff photographer there.
The children are not named. The photograph tells us nothing about whether or how these children are related. All we can know is that they are six of the more than 4,500 children who have been killed in Gaza, according to its Ministry of Health, since Israel began its military campaign in response to the brutal Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel. On that day, Hamas fighters slaughtered 1,200 people, among them many children. Hundreds of Israeli hostages, including children, are believed to be held in Gaza by Hamas, their families desperate for their safe release.
This photograph has not been published by a mainstream news organization, so far as I can tell. Because of its graphic nature, The Times has decided not to publish it in full; this column is accompanied by a cropped version of the image. The full image can be seen here. It is a rare thing for mainstream news organizations to publish graphic images of dead or wounded children. Rightly so. There is nothing quite so devastating as the image of a child whose life has been snuffed out by senseless violence. The longstanding norms are to show such images sparingly, if at all.
Of course, the news media no longer needs to disseminate an image for it to be seen. Social media bludgeons us with a flood of brutal images. And in a long reporting career that has taken me to many war zones, I have seen more than my share of death in real life. I’ve gone to these places because I believe deeply in bearing witness to all facets of the human experience, including war and suffering. One of the hardest parts of journalism is witnessing horror and then trying, in words, sound and image, to convey that pain to the wider world. Many people may want to look away, to see the world as they prefer to see it. But what should we see when we see war? What should war demand all of us to see and understand? Given my experience in war zones, it is a rare thing for a violent image to stop me in my tracks. But I believe that this is an image that demands to be seen.