I was recently reading an article at the Electronic Intifada about the boy who was shot by Israeli soldiers during the Eid holiday as he was playing with his toy gun and they mistook it for a real one. To make matters more interesting, his parents end up donating his organs to save 6 Israeli lives. The article is an interesting read on the role of human bodies in a very human tragedy. Anyways, from toy guns I am brought to…
Jacqueline Salloum is a Palestinian/Syrian-American artist based in New York. She is currently participating in the exhibit “Justice Matters: Artists Consider Palestine” at The Berkeley Art Center that runs until December 17 2005.
Her website is just full of some of the most amazing work I have ever seen done on Palestinian issues and the conflict.
Probably one of my favorites is the “Caterrorpillar”, an aspect of the current conflict that I am really interested in which concerns the IOF’s use of Caterpillar machines to destroy Palestinian homes. I blogged about this several times in my old blog. Check this out:
Click Here for enlarged image
In another interesting piece she creates gumball machines, the kind you would see in most supermarkets all across North America. Except with this one you insert a coin to get a magnet, sticker or ring of your favorite revolutionary; including Musa Kazim Pasha al-Husseini who led the Palestinian National Movement in the 1920’s.
But even more interesting is the Refugee Gumball Machine, which states: “EACH CAPSULE COMES WITH A PALESTINIAN REFUGEE
collect all 5 million!”
take for instance…
Omar- Age 4
Caption: “My name is Omar and I live in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon called Sabra.
My village, Jamzou, Palestine, was obliterated in 1948 to create the Jewish settlement that is still there today called Gizmo.”
or…
Noor- Age 6
Caption: “Hi, I am from Al Bassah, Palestine. My village of 4,000 people was destroyed in 1948.
Now you can go there and visit the Jewish settlement of Halal Bezet. Now I live in the Deheishe refugee camp”
What a great idea! This should not be wasted -while we wait for someone to make actual gumballs .maybe we can modify it a bit for the Interent and have websites and blogs “adopt” a Palestinian refugee. Anyone up for some a simple DB backend and some scripting? People can come to a website, register and select the colour captule, babies hair colour, refugee camp, etc and then they get a pieace of code they can stick of their site to display it.
mohammed, dare i say that is a brilliant idea? 😀
i’d buy into it.