A photo of Hamas operatives parading a German tourist's near-naked body through the streets of Gaza after the October 7, 2023 attack has won a photo of the year award, sparking huge debate on social media. The tourist, 23-year-old Shani Louk, was found dead a few weeks after the attack. The disturbing photo was part of a collection of 20 images that helped the Associated Press win first prize in one of the Pictures of the Year International award categories earlier this month.
The awards are held by the Donald W Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism.
The news spread like wildfire on social media and many users slammed the use of Ms Louk's image as an "outrageous desecration of Jewish life".
"This is just wrong and sick," one user commented on X. "Today marks a dark day for journalism and the world as a whole," said another.
"So terror porn and necrophilia are now the criteria for winning the Reynolds Journalism Institute's "Photo of the Year" award," a third user commented.
Announcing the win, the award organisers had posted the unblurred image of Ms Louk's lifeless body on its Instagram page. The photo was later deleted in the wake of the backlash.
Shani Louk was taken hostage when she was attending the Supernova music festival near the Gaza border, which became one of the targets of a surprise Hamas attack.
She became one of the faces of the war after the shocking images of her lifeless body on the back of a pickup truck started gaining traction on social media.
A rabbi who spoke to her family said the tattoo artist "was actually murdered after being tortured, and who knows what else".
Shani Louk had German and Israeli citizenship. She lived in Israel but spent part of her childhood in Portland, Oregon, where she attended kindergarten at the Jewish Portland Academy.
