A Beach, a Camera, and the Violence of Zionist Power

The images are difficult to look at — not because they are rare, but because they are familiar.

Taken on a public beach in Tel Aviv in 2018, the photographs show a white Israeli man grabbing a young Black man by the hair and pulling him into a forced selfie. The Israeli man smiles. The Black man does not. He stands exposed, passive, stripped of agency, his body treated not as human but as an object — something to be handled, displayed, and consumed.

This is not a misunderstanding. It is not cultural confusion. It is domination.

Zionism markets itself to the world as a liberation movement, a refuge from historical persecution. But on the ground, in moments like this, its real character surfaces — an ideology that normalizes hierarchy, racialized control, and the casual humiliation of those deemed inferior or expendable.

The young man in the images was reportedly using public beach showers. What followed was not friendship or consent, but coercion. Hair pulled. Space invaded. A camera raised. A moment stolen for amusement. This is what power looks like when it knows it will not be challenged.

Not an “Isolated Incident”

Defenders of Israel routinely dismiss such images as anomalies — the actions of one individual, disconnected from broader reality. That claim collapses under even minimal scrutiny.

Black communities in Israel — including African asylum seekers and Ethiopian Jews — have for years reported discrimination, police violence, surveillance, and routine dehumanization. Palestinians live under a far more extreme version of the same system: checkpoints, walls, military law, dispossession, and siege.

What links these experiences is not skin color alone, but a Zionist structure that ranks human worth — privileging some lives while rendering others disposable.

The beach incident matters precisely because it is mundane. No soldiers. No weapons. No battlefield. Just a man confident enough in his dominance to publicly humiliate another human being and smile for the camera while doing it.

The Silence Is the Message

There were no serious consequences. No public reckoning. No meaningful outrage from Israeli officials. The system did what it always does — it protected itself.

That silence is not neutral. It is approval by omission.

Zionism does not merely tolerate this behavior; it produces the conditions that make it possible. When an ideology teaches that land, safety, and dignity belong exclusively to one group, abuse becomes inevitable. When supremacy is normalized, cruelty becomes casual.

Why the Images Still Matter

These photographs continue to circulate because they expose something raw and undeniable. They cut through talking points and public relations campaigns. They show Zionism not as an abstract debate, but as lived reality — enacted on bodies, enforced through power, and preserved through silence.

You do not need tanks or bombs to see apartheid. Sometimes all it takes is a hand in someone’s hair and a smile for the camera.

And that is why this image refuses to dissappear.