This year’s World Press Photo Award, one of photojournalism’s most prestigious awards, went to Swedish photojournalist Paul Hansen‘s “Gaza Burial”, taken last November the 20th in Gaza.
WorldPressPhoto.Org tells us:
Two-year-old Suhaib Hijazi and his older brother Muhammad were killed when their house was destroyed by an Israeli missile strike. Their father Fouad was also killed and their mother was put in intensive care. Fouad’s brothers carry his children to the mosque for the burial ceremony as his body is carried behind on a stretcher.
It’s not always easy to tell the world of Palestinians’ suffering. ‘Terrorism’, ‘counter-terrorism’, ‘security’, ‘defense’ and a myriad of other words are used on a daily basis to hide the human cost of politics and its corrupted evil twin. But Hansen’s talent with a human face functions as yet another brutal, cold reminder that injustice towards the Palestinians is no mere political matter but a question of life and death for the millions of Palestinians living under occupation, and in particular those in Gaza.
There’s nothing more horrible than the death of a murdered child, except perhaps the realization that such things still exist. This image will, I’m sure, be imprinted on your hearts and minds as it did on mine and will serve, I hope, as another urgent call for action.
“The strength of the pictures lies in the way it contrasts the anger and sorrow of the adults with the innocence of the children. It’s a picture I will not forget.”
WorldPressPhoto Jury member Mayu Mohanna of Peru.
This is the 1st Featured Photograph
Hummus For Thought 
Reblogged this on Ned Hamson Second Line View of the News and commented:
No one can view this without feeling the same feelings of those we see and wishing, praying for no more such deaths anywhere and especially in Gaza
A moving photograph, Joey, and deserving of both the award it received and the finely-worded compliment you paid to the photographer. The dreadful thing is that the scene depicted, of family members bereft with grief at the killing of their own children, has been repeated many times over the years and will be repeated many times again – particularly in your part of the world. Talented photographers were not always around to record those earlier scenes, and they will not always be around in future. This is why it’s so important for those who are present to witness grief accurately. Mr Hansen does that. His image conveys a terrible human tragedy. But it also records a great wrong, and hints too at what will become of the bereaved’s grief if a solution to their situation is not found soon. The people of Gaza deserve what every one deserves – the right to live in peace, with dignity, within the confines of their own ancestral land. Their moral right to the same security and the same liberties that we in the West enjoy is communicated vividly in “Gaza Burial.” I know things are unimaginably complicated over there, at least in the political sense. But when you see what the conflict costs, it’s really not that complicated after all. “There’s nothing more horrible than the death of a murdered child…” Amen to that.