Let Your Hopes Bloom As The Cactus Blooms

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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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Fight The Rich, Feed The Poor

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“Fight the rich, feed the poor – Éıstıgí” (also “Free Gaza”) along Lecky Road in Derry’s Bogside.

Éıstıgí, or “listen, yous-uns” in Derry/Doıre, is the youth organisation associated with Soaradh (web); it promotes a socialist (and republican) ideology.

From February 2023:

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T02095 courtesy of Paddy Duffy

Peace Is The Greatest Victory

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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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Protect Our Children

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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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Father, Protect Me

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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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Republican Solidarity With 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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Another Martyr In The Earth

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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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Justice For Ian Ogle

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Two men were given life sentences on Thursday for the murder of Ian Ogle in 2019, pleading guilty but on the basis of intent to cause serious harm rather than to kill. The trial of three others on a murder charge will begin on Tuesday (iTV | BBC).

Ogle lived in Cluan Place in east Belfast, site of these stickers and many other tarps and posters since his death. See previously: (2020) Justice For Ian Ogle | (2021) The Leaders Of This People Cause Them To Err | Remember Your Own | (2022) For His Family | What Fire Does Not Destroy It Hardens

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If I Must Die

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“If I must die/Let it bring hope.” The annual march in remembrance of the victims of Bloody Sunday, 1972, was this year dedicated to the victims of the on-going attack by Israel on the Gaza Strip (Irish News). For the occasion, Free Derry Corner was papered over (by Adam “Spicebag” Doyle – RN | Irish Times) with words from a poem (Xitter) of Palestinian writer Refaat Alareer, who was killed by Israeli forces on December 7th (Al Jazeera | WP).

For teddy-bears and soft toys in Belfast, see It Could Be You and Boycott Israeli Genocide.

Free Derry Corner has two Visual History pages: front | rear

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Underneath A Big Umbrella

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The beach scene at the back of the Shankill leisure centre has existed since at least 2002 (J1439) and perhaps 1996 (C04937). The activities of the holiday-makers are (from left to right) crabbing in a tidal pool, wind-surfing, sandcastle-building, donkey-riding, and swimming; on the far right a dolphin is leaping.

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