In 1982, the French writer Jean Genet recorded his impressions of Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon, a week after the massacre of Palestinians and Lebanese Shiites carried out by Phalangist forces with the support and help of the Israelis. “Photography is unable to capture the flies,” he writes, “or the thick white smell of death. Nor can it tell about the little hops you have to make when walking from one corpse to the next.”
