Abby Zimet
February 3, 2012.
Children's art from Gaza - aimed at helping heal Palestinian kids traumatized by Operation Cast Lead, but censored at the last minute by the Museum of Children's Art in Oakland, Ca. after pressure from Jewish groups - is now available in a searing book, "A Child's View from Gaza." Born largely of the Middle East Children's Alliance (MECA)'s “Let the Children Play and Heal,” project, the book features drawings from kids who survived the Israeli assault that killed 1,400 people, but still see its planes and guns and bodies wherever they look. With a moving, truth-telling forward from Alice Walker. Buy this book, help these kids.
From Alice Walker's forward:
I realize it's hard for grownups to accept that we've had a hand in making a small child armless, legless, eyeless. We want to keep thinking Americans are generous, fun-loving, baseball-crazed folks who draw the line, collectively, at child abuse. At child murder. That image was never true, and it certainly isn't now....Each child who sees the art should be given some background about war. Any war. For it is war that humanity must outgrow, wherever it arises...We can encourage ourselves, and our children, never to be afraid to feel. No one dies from compassion, is a mantra they might like. Empathy is a wave that need never be stopped. If our children catch this wave, from the ocean of tears shed by Palestinian children, they might have a future in a more stable and saner world.
Comment: The project of confronting an ugly past is about resistance and finding the means to make sense of its permanent disfigurement.
For this reason the work that the Middle East Childrens Alliance (MECA) is a powerful strategy to confront and heal the lives of innocent Palestinian children brutalized by Israel.
Read more about their projects and support them here.
Onward!
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