Nissim Louk, the father of Shani Louk, stated on Israel's 76th Independence Day that the infamous photograph of his daughter's body demonstrates the "darkness" Israel is facing in its war against the Hamas terrorist organization.
A video of Shani's body being paraded in Gaza went viral in the days following the Hamas massacre of October 7. In March, the AP photograph of terrorists carrying his daughter's body, taken by a photographer who accompanied the terrorists during their raid into Israel on October 7, won a prestigious photojournalism award.
“This picture is very important because this picture shows from one side, Shani — beautiful, amazing, bright light to the world, and from the other side you see these militants in the pickup with machine guns that bring trouble and pain to the world and nobody can mix these two pictures," Louk said in an interview with the New York Post.
He said that anyone questioning his or her identity and wondering if they are the good guys or the bad guys should look at the photograph of Shani's body and then they would know the answers to their questions.
“You see that Shani is the light and that Shani is part of the Jewish people. We are the light. The other part is darkness. They bring pain to the world and suffering and that’s what happened to her,” he said.
In March, after the photograph of his daughter won the POY photojournalism competition's Team Picture Story of the Year category, Louk said, "It's good that the photo won the prize, this is one of the most important photos in the last 50 years. These are some of the photos that shape human memory, the Jew raising his hands, the paratroopers at the Western Wall, photos that symbolize an era. This documentation of Shani, and of Noa Argamani on the motorcycle, they symbolize this era. I think it's a good thing to use it to inform the future. If I start crying, what will come of it? This is history. In 100 years they will look and know what happened here. I travel the world and everyone knows who Shani is."