SWD 14

Shalom alekhem! Salaam Aleichem!, 2 child victims Israel-Palestine

Shalom alekhem! Salaam aleichem! Memorial to an Israeli-Jewish boy and and a Gaza child, both victims of the Israeli - Palestinian conflict

Art: 2010
Media: Ink, gouache, colored pencil on tea & coffee soaked Daler-Rowney drawing paper
Framed, 32 inches H x 36 W

Drawn from 2 photos seen on the internet. The plastic Zorro mask, plastic water gun and plastic revolver were drawn from a set of toys I bought for the Sight-seeing with Dignity art series drawing of Harvey Milk [see SWD 5].

~

The photo of the Gazan boy was seen in an internet website; the photo attribution to Hatem Moussa /  AP (Associated Press). The drawing of the Jewish boy was inspired by a photo I saw online: Shlomo Nativ, 13 years, was murdered in a terror attack; he and family lived in a West Bank settlement.

~
Sadly, the dehumanization of the other by supporters of either side of this never-ending conflict continues on even with my having drawn two young victims of the conflict. Some people express outraged that I would draw a young Gazan child and a Jewish Israeli boy  in one artwork. After I did the drawing I was soundly criticized by people who claim to support Israel and by people who claim to support the Palestinians, respectively. 
~
In my thinking it is not children and teens who who drive the conflict and the ensuing deaths with body-bags, funerals and the catastrophically maimed, both physically and physically .
It is adults who drive and continue the conflict.

~
I await the day when both sides will do what the last apartheid government of South African did: They  sat down and hammered out the peace with leaders of the vilified and despised African National Congress.

~
For years the ANC was viewed as a terrorist organization no less than how Israel, the U.S. and other governments view Hamas. And if the protagonists of the bloody northern Ireland conflict: Protestants and Catholics, could sit down and hammer out their peace, then Israelis and Palestinians can do the same. How many more body bags and wailing families must there be, Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Druze, and foreigners, too?

~
My artwork title is from the Hebrew language greeting of Shalom aleichem! and the Arabic greeting of Salaam Alekhem!