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2024-03-07 Israel-Palestine-Jordan
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Meet the squadron of photographers chronicling Israel’s protests for the world
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[IsraelTimes] For the past four years, the Israel Democracy Photography and Drone Squadron has been providing voluntary free documentation of demonstrations for local and foreign media.
Over the last year, weekly protests have rocked Israel as citizens demonstrated against the judicial overhaul introduced by the government in January 2023.
Malice incarnate with an unreported antifa-style violence sauce. Many saw the overhaul, which sought to strengthen the government at the expense of the judicial system, as a threat to democracy. Every Saturday night for most of last year, massive crowds erupted into the streets across the country to protest against what they saw as an undemocratic reform and called to preserve Israel’s democracy.
Telling the visual story from every protest was the Israel Democracy Photography and Drone Squadron, whose more than 300 stills and drone photographers and videographers documented every event and distributed the images to the media and the public free of charge.
The group was started in 2020 by Yair Palti and Amir Goldstein during what were known as the Balfour protests against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the COVID-19 lockdowns and Netanyahu’s ongoing corruption trials.
Before that it was Victory 2015 (V-15), the US State Department funded and US Democratic Party expert guided protests against Bibi’s reelection. The entire thing, refusing to accept the results of two decades of election results, was/is highly anti-democratic. Exactly what we’ve learnt to expect from the far-ish left of the political spectrum. Similar to last year’s demonstrations, the Balfour protests saw crowds of Israelis protesting in multiple locations across the country with a focus on the Prime Minister’s Residence in Jerusalem, known as Balfour because it’s on the corner of Balfour Street.
That’s because they’re the exact same people, pivoting to whatever claimed cause they think will get the rubes to join them in being riled up. "The group emerged out of necessity," Palti, who works in tech and does photography as a hobby, told The Times of Israel. "I realized that no media publication would be able to document a protest like that because it was very spread out and because the media was not really for the protests at the time."
To get the job done, Palti and Goldstein enlisted a group of both amateur and expert photographers who went all over the country to document protests.
During the Naftali Bennett-Yair Lapid government between June 2021 and November 2022, the organization had much less work, but with Netanyahu’s return to office and the introduction of his government’s judicial reform, it "took on new meaning and life," Margo Sugarman, head of the foreign media distribution group, told The Times of Israel.
The Never-Bibi crowd. Ugh. Sugarman is a freelance marketing and writing consultant and, like Palti, is a hobby photographer. She joined the squadron because she felt she needed to do more for the pro-democracy protests than just attend them.
"I asked around to see where I could be of use and volunteer, and a friend hooked me up with the group," she said. "I began volunteering and eventually took over the international group."
As a former journalist, Sugarman said a combination of her professional experience and her hobby helps her identify which photos and videos, out of of the hundreds she receives, to distribute.
When the pro-democracy protests against the government’s judicial overhaul began, Palti called up the affiliated photographers, and the group grew far beyond what it had been during the Balfour protests.
"At first, our materials were only used for news articles," Palti said, "but now we’re also being approached by programs like ’60 Minutes’ [in the US] to provide media for TV specials, research, and more historical productions."
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Posted by trailing wife 2024-03-07 2024-03-07 02:12||
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Posted by Huputle Cherelet4131 2024-03-07 08:22||
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Posted by Grom the Reflective 2024-03-07 08:25||
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