Malak Mattar (Palestine), Gaza, 2024. Photo: Tricontinental.
By Vijay PrashadĀ –Ā Feb 1, 2024
Dear friends,
Greetings from the desk ofĀ Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.
On 26 January, the judges at the International Court of Justice (ICJ)Ā foundĀ that it is āplausibleā that Israel is committing a genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. The ICJ called upon Israel to ātake all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all actsā that violate the UNĀ ConventionĀ on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948). Although the ICJ did not call explicitly for a ceasefire (as it did in 2022 when itĀ orderedĀ Russia to āsuspend [its] military operationā in Ukraine), even a casual reading of this order shows that to comply with the courtās ruling, Israel must end its assault on Gaza. As part of its āprovisional measuresā, the ICJ called upon Israel to respond to the court within a month and outline how it has implemented the order.
Though Israel has alreadyĀ rejectedĀ the ICJās findings, international pressure on Tel Aviv is mounting. Algeria hasĀ askedĀ the UN Security Council to enforce the ICJās order while Indonesia and Slovenia have initiated separateĀ proceedingsĀ at the ICJ that will begin on 19 February to seek an advisory opinion on Israelās control of and policies on occupied Palestinian territories, pursuant to a UN General Assembly resolution adopted in December 2022. In addition, Chile and Mexico haveĀ calledĀ upon the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate crimes committed in Gaza.
Israelās reaction to the ICJās order was characteristically dismissive. The countryās national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir,Ā calledĀ the ICJ an āantisemitic courtā and claimed that it ādoes not seek justice, but rather the persecution of Jewish peopleā. Strangely, Ben Gvir accused the ICJ of being āsilent during the Holocaustā. The Holocaust conducted by the Nazi German regime and its allies against European Jews, the Romani, homosexuals, and communists took place between late 1941 and May 1945, when the Soviet Red Army liberated prisoners from RavensbrĆ¼ck, Sachsenhausen, and Stutthof. However, the ICJ was established in June 1945, one month after the Holocaust ended, and began its work in April 1946. Israelās attempt to delegitimise the ICJ by saying that it remained āsilent during the Holocaustā when it was, in fact, not yet in existence, and then to use that false statement to call the ICJ an āantisemitic courtā shows that Israel has no answer to the merits of the ICJ order.
Meanwhile, the bombardment of Palestinians in Gaza continues. My friend Naāeem Jeenah, director of the Afro-Middle East Centre in Johannesburg, South Africa, has been reviewing the data from various government ministries in Gaza as well as media reports to circulate a daily information card on the situation. TheĀ cardĀ from 26 January, the date of the ICJ order and the 112th day of the genocide, details that over 26,000 Palestinians, at least 11,000 of them children, have been killed since 7 October; 8,000 are missing; close to 69,000 have been injured; and almost all of Gazaās 2.3 million residents have been displaced. The numbers are bewildering. During this period, Israel has damaged 394 schools and colleges, destroying 99 of them as well as 30 hospitals and killing at least 337 medical personnel. This is the reality that occasioned the genocide case at the ICJ and the courtās provisional measures, with one judge, Dalveer Bhandari of India, going further toĀ sayĀ plainly that āall fighting and hostilities [must] come to an immediate haltā.
Amongst the dead areĀ manyĀ of Palestineās painters, poets, writers, and sculptors. One of the striking features of Palestinian life over the past 76 years since the Nakba (āCatastropheā) of 1948 has been the ongoing richness of Palestinian cultural production. A brisk walk down any of the streets of Jenin or Gaza City reveals the ubiquity of studios and galleries, places where Palestinians insist upon their right to dream. In late 1974, the South African militant and artist Barry Vincent Feinberg published an article in the Afro-Asian journalĀ LotusĀ that opens with an interaction in London between Feinberg and a āyoung Palestinian poetā. Feinberg was curious why, inĀ Lotus, āan unusually large number of poems stem from Palestinian poetsā. The young poet, amused by Feinbergās observation, replied: āThe only thing my people have never been denied is the right to dreamā.
Malak Mattar, born in December 1999, is a young Palestinian artist who refuses to stop dreaming. Malak was fourteen when Israel conducted its Operation Protective Edge (2014) in Gaza, killing over two thousand Palestinian civilians in just over one month ā a ghastly toll that built upon the bombardment of the Occupied Palestinian Territory that has been ongoing for more than a generation. Malakās motherĀ urgedĀ her to paint as an antidote to the trauma of the occupation. Malakās parents are both refugees: her father is from al-Jorah (now called Ashkelon) and her mother is from al-Batani al-Sharqi, one of the Palestinian villages along the edge of what is now called the Gaza Strip. On 25 November 1948, the newly formed Israeli government passed Order Number 40, which authorised Israeli troops to expel Palestinians from villages such as al-Batani al-Sharqi. āYour role is to expel the Arab refugees from these villages and prevent their return by destroying the villagesā¦ Burn the villages and demolish the stone housesā,Ā wroteĀ the Israeli commanders.
Malakās parents carry these memories, but despite the ongoing occupation and war, they try to endow their children with dreams and hope. Malak picked up a paint brush and began to envision a luminous world of bright colours and Palestinian imagery, including the symbol ofĀ sumudĀ (āsteadfastnessā): the olive tree. Since she was a teenager, Malak has painted young girls and women, often with babies and doves, though, as sheĀ toldĀ the writer Indlieb Farazi Saber, the womenās heads are often titled to the side. That is because, she said, āIf you stand straight, upright, it shows you are stable, but with a head tilted to one side, it evokes a feeling of being broken, a weakness. We are humans, living through wars, through brutal momentsā¦ the endurance sometimes slipsā.
Malak and I have corresponded throughout this violence, her fears manifest, her strength remarkable. In January, she wrote, āIām working on a massive painting depicting many aspects of the genocideā. On a five-metre canvas, Malak created a work of art that began to resemble Pablo Picassoās celebratedĀ GuernicaĀ (1937), which he painted to commemorate a massacre by fascist Spain against a town in the Basque region. In 2022, the United Nations Relief and Works AgencyĀ for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) published aĀ profileĀ on Malak, calling her āPalestineās Picassoā. In the article, Malak said, āI was so inspired by Picasso that, in the beginning of my art journey, I tried to paint like himā. This new painting by Malak reflects the heartbreak and steadfastness of the Palestinian people. It is an indictment of Israelās genocide and an affirmation of Palestiniansā right to dream. If you look at it closely, you will see the victims of the genocide: the medical workers, the journalists, and the poets; the mosques and the churches; the unburied bodies, the naked prisoners, and the corpses of small children; the bombed cars and the fleeing refugees. There is a kite flying in the sky, a symbol from Refaat AlareerāsĀ poemĀ āIf I Must Dieā (āyou must live to tell my storyā¦ so that a child, somewhere in Gaza while looking heaven in the eyeā¦ sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above and thinks there is an angel there bringing back loveā).
Malakās work is rooted in Palestinian traditions of painting, inspired by a history that dates back to Arab Christian iconography (a tradition that was developed by Yusuf al-Halabi of Aleppo in the seventeenth century). That āAleppo Styleā, as the art critic Kamal Boullata wrote inĀ Istihdar al-Makan, developed into the āJerusalem Styleā, which brightened the iconography by introducing flora and fauna from Islamic miniatures and embroidery. When I first saw Malakās work, I thought of how fitting it was that she had redeemed the life of Zulfa al-Saādi (1905ā1988), one of the most important painters of her time, who painted Palestinian political and cultural heroes. Al-Saādi stopped painting after she was forced to flee Jerusalem during the 1948 Nakba; her only paintings that remain are those that she carried with her on horseback. Saādi spent the rest of her life teaching art to Palestinian children at an UNRWA school in Damascus. It was in one such UNRWA school that Malak learned to paint. Malak seemed to pick up al-Saādiās brushes and paint for her.
It is no surprise that Israel has targeted UNRWA, successfully encouraging several key Global North governments toĀ stop fundingĀ the agency, which wasĀ establishedĀ by United Nations General Assembly Resolution 302 in 1949 to ācarry out direct relief and works programmes for Palestine refugeesā. In any given year, half a million Palestinian children like MalakĀ studyĀ at UNRWA schools. Raja Khalidi, director-general of the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute (MAS),Ā saysĀ of this funding suspension: āGiven the long-standing precarious nature of UNRWAās financesā¦ and in light of its essential role in providing vital services to Palestine refugees and some 1.8 million displaced persons in Gaza, cutting its funding at such a moment heightens the threat to life against Palestinians already at risk of genocideā.
I encourage you to circulate Malakās mural, to recreate it on walls and public spaces across the world. Let it penetrate into the souls of those who refuse to see the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people.
Warmly,
Vijay
Vijay Prashad
Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He is the chief editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations: A Peopleās History of the Third World (The New Press, 2007), The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South (Verso, 2013), The Death of the Nation and the Future of the Arab Revolution(University of California Press, 2016), and Red Star Over the Third World (LeftWord, 2017). He writes regularly for Frontline, the Hindu, Newsclick, AlterNet and BirGĆ¼n.
