“I stand with Israel.” These two stickers expressing support for Israel are in (PUL) Cluan Place, in east Belfast.
See also: Ulster & Israel | אי כניעה
For Ian Ogle, see Justice For Ian Ogle.
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“Since 1948”. This is an interesting board in a comic-book/graphic-novel or movie-poster style with a montage of striking imagery and patterning crammed together, revealed by pseudo-tears, and overlaid lettering in multiple fonts and colours.
The imagery and references are threatening: included are air-jacker Leila Khaled and a rioter with a catapult (who completes the slogan “from the river to the sea … Palestine will be free!”; the lower part of the face of the main figure (and of the face in the bottom-right corner) is covered; we also see “Rebel With[out] A Cause” the 1955 film. in the top left “Struggle Continues – Since 1948” in the style of a fashion emblem, and in the bottom right, “1948” in the style of a mid-century house-number font or perhaps the 1984 film version (with John Hurt and Richard Burton) of Orwell’s 1984.
The other piece – a large bird in the colours of Palestine – is a poster by Videndomen (PPA).
Glen Road, Derry.
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Copyright © 2024 Andy McDonagh/Eclipso Pictures (ig | Fb)
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The title is the Arabic translation of the Irish “Tıocfaıdh ár lá” taken from a Belfast mural, Freedom In Arabic. (“Tıocfaıdh ár lá” is commonly given in English as “our day will come”; Google reverses the Arabic into English as “Our day is coming”.) At the other end of the block (and above Fight The Rich, Feed The Poor) is a French or Spanish “Viva la resistance”; presumably intended to be “Vive la résistance” or “Viva la revolución”. But it’s a principle of interpretation at Extramural that the spelling (or the quality of the art) is not the point when people feel they are not being heard. In this case, the message is clear: “Free Palestine”.
The Easter lily and Palestinian flag with PFLP (Popular Front For The Liberation Of Palestine) emblem are to the right of Always Anti-Fascist and below the INLA board seen in Serious Trouble.
“RSYM” is the Republican Socialist Youth Movement (Fb).
Durrow Park, Derry.
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The inverted red triangle has become a symbol of support for Palestine and Hamas, apparently because of its use in Hamas videos to indicate Israeli targets being blown up (Middle East Monitor | Al Jazeera video), as though a kind of cross-hairs.
In this Derry art, the red triangle has been given a Banksy-style presentation as the balloon of a child (reminiscent of Girl With Balloon in London and, given the context, Flying Balloon Girl in the West Bank) walking beneath the Lecky Road underpass.
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Heba Zagout (ig) was a Palestinian artist and teacher who painted Palestinian women and scenes from everyday life, including one from 2022 of holiday fireworks over a Bethlehem skyline that includes both churches and mosques. (You can see the original acrylic on the Painting For Palestine facebook page). The painting has now been reproduced as a mural on the International Wall in CNR west Belfast. She and two of her children, Adam and Mahmoud, were killed in October in an Israeli air strike on Gaza. (Middle East Eye | Guardian)
The next mural (to the right) can be seen in Broken Family.
The image above is from February 7th. January 29th:
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Normally the tourists’ graffiti on the Cupar Way “peace” wall amounts to “Patronising Slogans” but the Hamas-Israel conflict has brought international politics to the wall, with the Star Of David being replaced by a swastika and “Stop genocide in Gaza” in the same hand. There is a march at 1 p.m. today from Writers’ Square to the city hall, organised by the IPSC (Fb), .
The sticker on top of the swastika can be seen in Saoırse Don Phalaıstín.
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“No illegal immigration – protect our children.” The January Fact Sheet from gov.uk on 2023’s measures against illegal migration includes a “Small Boats Operational Command” with a staff of 500 people to tackle “illegal migration by small boats”. Summary statistics for small-boat arrivals can be found on WP. Stopping the boats was one of the government’s “five key priorities” in March, 2023 (Reuters) and included in the Bill approved in July (gov.uk). The plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda was declared illegal by the Supreme Court in November (Reuters).
This small sticker on the Mersey Street street-sign is in east Belfast. The source of the need to “protect children” is unknown; the attacker outside Gaelscoıl Choláıste Mhuıre in Dublin in November was originally from Algeria (it is not known how he arrived) and a naturalised Irish citizen since 2014 (WP).
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Here is a completed mural from the Painting For Palestine project (Fb) on the International Wall, Divis Street, Belfast, showing a man holding an injured child against a backdrop of razed buildings in Gaza. It is now 125 days since Israel began its war on Gaza in response to the Hamas attacks on October 7th and images of parents carrying their dead and injured children, and of the devastation of Gaza’s buildings, are now all too common – here is an Al Jazeera gallery from December.
Like the ‘Khan Younis mass grave’ (seen in Another Martyr In The Earth), this image is also by digital artist Saïd Hassan (ig). The next mural (to the right) can be seen in A Window To A Free Country.
The images above are from January 29th.
From January 26th:
For earlier images of the squaring and cartoon, see Painting For Palestine.
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Since the October 7th attack by Hamas and the subsequent Israeli invasion of Gaza, the number of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel has gone up from about 5,000 to about 9,000, including about 3,500 prisoners held under what is called “administrative detention” or what would be known here as “internment without trial”. (Figures for the last fifteen years are available at HaMoked and at B’Tselem.) Prisoners recently released from Israeli detention have described the beatings and degrading treatment they received (Amnesty | Reuters | Haaretz).
During the peace process of the mid-1990s, a green ribbon was used as a symbol of republican political prisoners, whose release was one of the major goals in a peace settlement – see this large example from Shantallow, Derry, from 1998. It is still used post-Agreement by physical-force republicans, e.g. End Brit Brutality and Maghaberry Concentration Camp.
The board is on the Meenan Square construction site in the Bogside, Derry. For the INLA board in the background of the wide shot, see Serious Trouble.
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This entry chronicles (in reverse order/from latest to earliest) the painting of one of Saïd Hassan’s (ig) contributions to the Painting For Palestine (Fb) project that is currently transforming the International Wall on Divis Street in west Belfast. The piece appears to be inspired by the mass grave in Khan Younis (in the Gaza Strip) in which more than 100 corpses were buried in November (Al Jazeera video | Reuters gallery).
Hassan’s instagram post of his original artwork cites a few lines from Palestinian author Ghassan Kanafani (WP): “Let’s plant them as our martyrs in the womb of this soil thickened with bleeding … there is always room in the ground for another martyr.”
The image above is from January 29th.
January 26th:
For the blanked wall (on January 20th), see Painting For Palestine.
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Extramural Activity 