It\u2019s unclear exactly what the image is. A series of tents? Truck beds against a rust orange background? Multicolored rectangles? <\/p>\n
Mountains are visible in the background, and in the foreground are the following words: \u201cAll Eyes on Rafah\u201d \u2014 a reference to the southernmost Gazan city that became the center of war coverage this week, after an Israeli strike on a refugee camp in the city, on what had been labeled a safe zone, killed dozens of already displaced Palestinians. <\/p>\n
In the wake of the attack, the aforementioned image has seemingly been everywhere. Likely created using artificial intelligence, the graphic \u2014 which is not an actual picture from Rafah or the war in Gaza \u2014 has been shared more than 46 million times on Instagram alone. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s become so ubiquitous, comedian Tim Dillon noted it\u2019s been shared like \u201cit\u2019s a new show on NBC.\u201d <\/p>\n
But the picture\u2019s popularity has raised questions and critiques on the passivity of the act. Eyes being on Rafah has not stopped the violence, wrote scientist Ayesha Khan on Instagram. Simply posting an ambiguous graphic is performative, Khan and others have noted. <\/p>\n
Still, the post\u2019s momentum has continued. Here\u2019s where the phrase comes from, where the graphic originated and what it could signal. <\/p>\n
The phrase \u201cAll Eyes on Rafah\u201d has been appearing in various graphics and images associated with the war in Gaza for months and is not necessarily tied to this specific viral image. <\/p>\n
It likely originated from comments made in February by Rik Peeperkorn, who leads the World Health Organization\u2019s office in the West Bank and in Gaza. <\/p>\n
At the time, more than 1.5 million Palestinian refugees, many of whom had been fleeing from the north and the center parts of Gaza, were crammed into the southernmost city of Rafah, which was also undergoing a wave of Israeli airstrikes \u2014 attempts to \u201chit Hamas terrorists in the area,\u201d an IDF spokesperson said. <\/p>\n
\u201cAll eyes\u201d were on Rafah, Peeperkorn said, a phrase which then became widely used by activists and made its way into graphics, like the one currently going viral. <\/p>\n
There are a few aspects of this image that may have contributed to its popularity, noted Faiza Hirji, an associate professor at Ontario\u2019s <\/strong>McMaster University who studies race, religion and media. <\/p>\n Also, the way the image is being shared on Instagram \u2014 with a handy \u201cadd yours\u201d feature that allows users to easily repost the image onto their own personal stories \u2014 only aids in its viral success. The easier it is to share, the more likely it is that people will do so. <\/p>\n Still, there\u2019s been some criticism of the image. To understand the graphic, the user would need to have some sense of what is actually happening in Rafah and would therefore know that the image being shared does not actually depict the violence and the scale of destruction taking place. For some, this could make the graphic more appealing, while others have argued that the image takes away from what is actually occurring on the ground. <\/p>\n \u201cI think for some people, this also causes a kind of discomfort,\u201d Hirji said. \u201cBecause you\u2019re directing everyone\u2019s gaze to an image that doesn\u2019t really show the horror of what happens in conflict zones.\u201d <\/p>\n Others have pointed out that the image does not actually include the words \u201cPalestine\u201d or \u201cGaza\u201d \u2014 names that have been widely politicized even before October 7. <\/p>\n \u201cRafah does not have the immediate name recognition for people who haven\u2019t been paying attention,\u201d said writer Heben Nigatu on X. \u201cAre people Googling Rafah? Sharing without looking it up?\u201d <\/p>\n Everybody likely has differing motivations behind sharing an image. For some, sharing the image might be a call for others to investigate what\u2019s happening in the region, and in Rafah specifically, Hirji said. Reposting the image could be a way to say to an audience: \u201cDon\u2019t look away. You can\u2019t pretend this isn\u2019t happening.\u201d <\/p>\n Other interpretations are less charitable. Take for instance the argument that the graphic is a performative gesture, an image that can\u2019t be bothered to show the reality in Gaza with a vaguely political statement stamped atop \u2014 not dissimilar to the black squares posted on social media during the racial reckoning of 2020. <\/p>\n But unlike debates about racism in the aftermath of George Floyd\u2019s murder, for many people in the West the war in Gaza is not happening close to home. <\/strong>This could make it difficult for people to feel empowered, Hirji said, in terms of their direct ability to affect the war\u2019s outcome. <\/p>\n \u201cI think that many people are powerless and feel that powerlessness,\u201d she said. \u201cSome of it may be performative, but maybe they feel that the only action they can really take at this time is to at least raise awareness. And so this notion of \u2018All Eyes on Rafah,\u2019 if it can be a bit informative or educational, then perhaps there\u2019s a sense that this is the action they can take.\u201d <\/p>\n And still, there are worries of \u201cslacktivism,\u201d the notion that all we need to do to change the world is share a single infographic enough times. <\/p>\n \u201cWe need far more than performative rallies and symbolic protests that don\u2019t aim to disrupt anything,\u201d wrote Khan. \u201cBearing witness is still a passive act. And we shouldn\u2019t coddle ourselves pretending like a post a day \u2026 is substantial.\u201d <\/p>\n The phrase itself \u2014 keeping \u201ceyes on\u201d a place \u2014 inherently prioritizes the audience rather than Rafah, creating a distance between the viewers and the victims. And still, Hirji said, even amid calls to not look away, the world often does so anyway. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s important, you could say, that if nothing else, we acknowledge our complicity, or we acknowledge our inaction,\u201d Hirji said. \u201cThat\u2019s one interpretation.\u201d <\/p>\n But there\u2019s another interpretation, too, which could be that audiences are setting themselves up as watchers to this trauma, Hirji noted, becoming both indifferent and inactive. History and research of past conflicts in parts of the Middle East or the Global South speak for itself, Hirji said \u2014 \u201coften so much of what we do is we watch, we judge, we comment,\u201d even while not knowing enough about the places we are watching or commenting on. <\/p>\n \u201cAnd is that also a point that some people are trying to make by having this call out? To say: So we\u2019re watching it, now what?\u201d Hirji said. \u201cWhat happens after watching?\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s unclear exactly what the image is. A series of tents? Truck beds against a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4205,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4204\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} What does \u2018All Eyes on Rafah\u2019 mean?<\/h2>\n