Even with Palestinian children’s art, Israel must make itself the victim
JVL Introduction
UK psychotherapist Gwyn Daniels a member of the UK Palestine Mental Health Network and a patron of the Palestine Trauma Centre which works in Gaza.
She writes here about the pressure exerted by UK Lawyers for Israel on Chelsea and Westminster Hospital School to remove an exhibition of art produced by Palestinian children in Gaza (also covered in our earlier post A new moral panic about “antisemitism?)
The reason: “some Jewish patients… said that they felt vulnerable and victimised by this display” i.e. British Jews should not be troubled by discomfort when confronted by the consequences of Israel’s actions…
This approach, believes Daniels “exactly mirrors the Israeli view that Palestinian children have to be responded to as if they are not really children at all and thus merit no empathy, and that sympathy should be reserved for those who feel threatened by them.”
___________
With thanks to Middle East Eye for permission to repost.
This article was originally published by Middle East Eye on Fri 3 Mar 2023. Read the original here.
Even with Palestinian children's art, Israel must make itself the victim
The pressure exerted on a London hospital to remove artwork by Gaza children illustrates the length to which Israel’s friends will go to whitewash its abuses and erase Palestinian voices
Loading article text…
Please write to complain about this to Ms Lesley Watts, CEO Chelsea and Westminster Hospital
[email protected]
Anyone who says there isn’t an Israel lobby should read this. UKLFI is one of the worst of the lobby groups – how many are there?
British Zionists are in a very strange place at the moment.
On the one hand, we have Hodge, Schama and others, railing against the present Israeli regime – without, once, mentioning the Palestinians.
On the other hand, we have the UK Lawyers for Israel threatening legal action and demanding art work – created by traumatised Palestinian children, from Gaza – be removed from a UK hospital.
Anyone could be forgiven for thinking, British Zionists have a particular blind spot when it comes to Palestinian Human Rights – children, or not.
It’s not true that Hodge doesn’t mention the Palestinians. The trouble is – HOW she mentions them.
In her recent article in the Guardian, they didn’t figure as people with their own agency, their own concerns, their own aspirations. So she celebrated an unnamed Israeli group (Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, I am pretty sure) who take Jewish and Palestinian medics into the West Bank every Saturday, to provide support, advice, referrals etc to village Palestinians with little or no access to medical services. PHR-I is a brilliant organisation, which not only delivers expert clinical services, but also does crucial campaigning. However, here what Hodge saw was them HELPING Palestinians. She didn’t tell us what Palestinians want, or how they perceive their situation, or even what they told her they think about Israel (whilst we are very well aware of Israeli views of the Palestinians).
Her article, for all its limitations, was very important for setting a cat among pigeons (i.e. among ‘mainstream’ and ‘establishment’ Jews), and we must try not to disparage it or fail to acknowledge its significance, regardless of what we think about its author! But we can still point out that it did nothing to shift the political assumptions among diaspora Jews (and the governments of the countries where we live), that everything has to be about us!
Brilliant article.
My jaw hit the floor
The actions of UKLFI are outrageous and possibly illegal, equivalent to incitement. How would the beleaguered and traumatised children of Gaza feel to see their work being removed? What was the evidence of Jewish patients being made to feel ‘vulnerable and victimised’? This should have been dismissed as an unacceptable reason, even if true, to remove children’ artwork from one of the most egregious prison enclaves of people under siege by a racist apartheid state. The hospital was entirely wrong to do this disgusting bowing to the unacceptable pressure from a bullying outfit linked to the Israeli state, that pervades any scenario where there is the expression of Palestinian culture or showing its decades long predicament under the jackboot of Israeli colonialism. The hospital must immediately re-instate this exhibition and issue an apology to the children of Gaza and the organisers of the exhibition.