The Elusive, Impossible, Iconic War Photo

Revisiting the past to unravel the flood of images emerging from the Israel-Hamas War.

Photograph by David Rubinger

David Rubinger hated this photo. Arguably the most iconic and widely-recognized photo in Israeli history, it nearly ended up on the cutting room floor.

On June 7, 1967, Rubinger, covering the Six-Day War for LIFE magazine, reached the Western Wall in Jerusalem minutes after its liberation by Israeli paratroopers.

“The scene around me was extremely emotional,” Rubinger recalled. “People were crying with joy and relief, and I have to admit that, as I shot my pictures, tears were rolling down my cheeks too.”¹

After processing his film, Rubinger felt this photo, of Rabbi Shlomo Goren on the shoulders of jubilant soldiers, was his strongest.

Photograph by David Rubinger

Thankfully, Rubinger also showed prints to his wife, Anni, asking her opinion. She selected the iconic photo of the three soldiers. “In her view much more effective than the one of Rabbi Goren,” Rubinger wrote.²

The sequence building up to the iconic photo is fascinating — the mood evolves from superficial to something deeper, more lasting.

Photograph by David Rubinger

Surprisingly, LIFE passed on Rubinger’s photo. Instead, they selected an image of Egyptians surrendering to Israeli troops for their June 16, 1967 cover.

Inside, editors went with a photo from the Western Wall credited to Magnum’s Cornell Capa and Micha Bar-Am, who covered the Six-Day War together.

The following photo (published as a double-truck), of Israeli soldiers at the Temple Mount, was initially credited to the duo but was later attributed solely to Bar-Am.

Photograph by Micha Bar-Am

I love this photo and if you know me, you know why.

So if LIFE didn’t publish Rubinger’s photo of the three soldiers, how did it become iconic? Turns out Rubinger had cut a deal with the Israeli military, offering photos in return for access to the front lines of the war. He gave a print to the Israeli Government Press Office who then made millions of copies and sold it everywhere — 1967’s version of viral.

“Icons are not made by the photographer — they're made by the public,” Rubinger told The Jewish Telegraph.

Rubinger's photo emerged as a symbol of triumph in the Six-Day War — Israel’s version of Joe Rosenthal’s iconic Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima.

An even more direct reference to Rosenthal’s photo is this 1973 image from the Yom Kippur War by Egyptian photographer Antoun Al-Bir (أنطون ألبير).

Photograph by Antoun Al-Bir

After enduring two months in captivity at the hands of the Israeli Army, Al-Bir, working for Al-Ahram, photographed Egyptian forces as they captured territory along the eastern bank of the Suez Canal.

Al-Bir’s photo became Egypt’s Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima. The similarities are unmistakable.

Photograph by Joe Rosenthal

The photos were immortalized as stamps.

Thus far, no single image has come to define the Israel-Hamas War. No Rubinger, no Al-Bir.

Are singular “iconic” photos even possible anymore? In a conflict so profoundly complex, I don’t believe so. Here's how the first week of the war was featured on the front pages of The New York Times.

Some background: I was The New York Times’ international picture editor during The Gaza War in 2009. We faced heavy criticism from both sides of the conflict for appearing to favor the other. Readers went so far as to literally measure the size of each photo printed in the paper to ensure balanced coverage.

The Page One editors clearly prioritize this balance, sometimes at the expense of impact. There’s some powerful work being made by their photographers on assignment — Samar Abu Elouf and Yousef Masoud in Gaza and Sergey Ponomarev, Tamir Kalifa, Amit Elkayam, and Avishag Shaar-Yashuv in Israel.

But, like everyone else, I’m doomscrolling on Instagram, encountering a lot of this:

However, two photos from the Israel-Hamas War have definitely stayed with me longer than the rest. There’s no bloodshed, no death, only an impending sense of doom.

The first was taken by Samar Abu Elouf in Gaza on October 7, 2023.

Photograph by Samar Abu Elouf

“It was a moment of relative joy, but these were children of Gaza,” Abu Elouf wrote. “If you ask them, some can tell you what kind of plane is flying overhead, or what kind of bomb just exploded. And so when the all-too-familiar sounds of war encroached, their Saturday afternoon of play was over, and they knew what to do. They got to cover.”

Abu Elouf's photo is transcendent. There’s joy and fear and wonder and uncertainty. Over the past few days I’ve seen countless photos of lifeless children being carried the same way this boy is holding his sister. This isn’t that.

The second was taken by Dor Kedmi in Rehovot, Israel, on October 13, 2023.

Photograph by Dor Kedmi

Kedmi was in his car, en route to an army base, carrying a blanket, pillow, and fresh clothes for his sister stationed there.

“Just before I arrived, a ‘red color’ alarm sounded, which means a missile is on its way,” Kedmi told me. “We were in the middle of the road and the instructions were to stay away from the cars, and lie on the ground. An ultra-Orthodox family got out of the car in front of me — a father and his children. They laid down on the ground next to me, the father protecting the little boy with his body. He couldn’t take care of everyone. Right at the moment of the photo, the Iron Dome system intercepted the missile above us, a loud explosion was heard and there was a fear that shrapnel would fall on us.”

Kedmi’s heart wrenching photo, distributed by the Associated Press, is artful and complex. The father faces an impossible task of protecting only one of his children, as the others fend for themselves, hands on their heads. The little boy, barefoot, is clutching his pacifier while also protecting himself. Sadly, they’ve all practiced this before.

Kedmi told me that he wasn’t on assignment when he shot this photo. I asked him how the Associated Press ended up with it.

They found it on Instagram.

1. David Rubinger, Israel Through My Lens: 60 Years As a Photojournalist. (New York: Abbeville Press, 2007), 123.

2. Ibid, 124.