Part 2, Chapter 12 Summary

Chapter 12, entitled "The Holocaust," completes Shipler's consideration of "Images." It opens dramatically, watching as a stark prison camp is constructed in southern Lebanon. The author tells about his visit to Ansar in September 1983, accompanied by Times photographer Micha Bar-Am and Svenska Dagbladet reporter Cordelia Edvardson, a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps Theresienstadt and Auschwitz. Israeli officials had steered journalists away from Ansar and tried to place restrictions on Shipler, but finally agreed to an open visit.

Shipler describes the 4,700 prisoners' haunting stares, dark anger, vacant defeat, tough, weak, aging and boyish. Ansar is a "squalid sore" - stinking of sewage and garbage, dusty in summer and in winter muddy, raw, and miserable. Israeli guards range in temperament from brutal to humane. The prisoners grow restive and organize a grievance committee to seek protection under the Geneva conventions regarding prisoners of...