Visual Evidence and the Gaza Flotilla Raid: Extraterritoriality and the Image

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This book engages with pivotal examples of extraterritorialityfrom Antiquity and into the twenty first centuryin order to broaden the original judicial and geographical definition and thereby include physical and digitized information, and visual data in particular. By focusing on a critical incident of recent Middle Eastern historynamely,the Gaza Freedom Flotilla of 2010 which sailed against Israel's enduring blockadeit shows how the device of extraterritoriality shapes not only the political situation in Gaza, the legal status of the maritime environment in which the flotilla incident took place, and the judicial actions taken in response but also reveals how the concept of extraterritoriality is key to explaining the States subsequent efforts to confiscate and monopolize all visual evidence of its alleged violations of international statutes. Through the lens of the missing visual evidence characterizing the Mavi Marmara incident after-effects, it explores how the legal systems ability to evade transparency seems to be a built-in condition for eluding criminal accountability at the international level, with the emphasis on extraterritorialitys fundamental role in fashioning our current legal and political orders.

Reviews

"For the past decade, Maayan Amir has been developing a number of daring and fascinating projects with artist Ruti Sela. This book which builds on ideas emanating from them offers an extraordinary foray into the complexities of todays politics over the use of imagery, and the ensuing struggle against dominant image regimes. The book opens new channels for understanding how images become entangled in armed conflicts, and paves the way to a new form of liberating image-activism." * Eyal Weizman, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK *
"This book espouses a most original approach toward the study of the concept of extraterritoriality. It excels in sophistication and complexity when demonstrating the political significance of extraterritoriality in international relations, both from a historical and contemporary perspective. It illuminates the relations between law and the image, as well as governmental attempts to set borders to visual information, especially in the context of the Israeli- Palestinian conflict." * Cedric Ryngaert, Utrecht University, The Netherlands *
"This work demonstrates the salience of the concept and practice of extraterritoriality. It shows why Wittgenstein was right when he spoke of family resemblance: the concept hosts a plurality of legal, political and geographical meanings. These meanings are rooted in affinities between practices that like in a real family may be at war with each other. The empty space of the extraterritorial turns out to be crowded with attempts to weaponize the freedom it seems to harbour, and Maayan Amir unearths how it contributed to a lethal war over the images capable of captivating public imagination." * Mireille Hildebrandt, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium *

Author Bio

Maayan Amir is a Senior Lecturer in the Arts Department at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel. As a practicing artist, her work has been exhibited at the New Museum, Centre Pompidou, Tate Modern, Jeu de Paume, and others, and includes the art project Exterritory, which received a UNESCO award. Among her academic work is Extraterritorialities in Occupied Worlds (co-edited with Ruti Sela in 2016). She was a member of the Forensic Architecture project, and in 2020 received the Early Career Researcher Prize from the International Association for Visual Culture and the Journal of Visual Culture