Double erasure: Portraits of journalists murdered by the IDF pasted to ABC HQ are torn down, echoing their subjects’ erasure
The Zionist colonial project was established on stolen Palestinian land. During the 1948 Nakba, at least 15,000 Palestinians were massacred, hundreds of Palestinian villages were destroyed and at least 750,000 were forcefully expelled from their homeland. The ‘Australian’ state was amongst the first to recognise the Zionist state of ‘israel’, and remains ideologically, financially and diplomatically committed to upholding the violence of Zionism in occupied Palestine.
For over 75 years since, ‘Australian’ media has been complicit; explicit and uncritical in its reproduction of Zionist propaganda.
By contrast, Palestinian journalists courageously report on their own mass-killing and brutal dispossession, risking their lives to bring us the truth of ‘Israel’s’ project of genocide and colonial expansion.
Thanks in large part to these journalists, the world is witnessing the horrifying massacre of over 20,000 Palestinians and the razing of Gaza. We are also witnessing the invasion and destruction of Palestinian communities across the occupied West Bank. In an attempt to conceal its atrocities, ‘Israel’ is deliberately targeting Palestinian journalists. The supposed colleagues of these journalists in western media organisations are largely ignoring these targeted assassinations.
Artists' statement:
We, the creators of these portraits, grieve the murder of our journalists by the IOF.
We honour their devotion to witnessing and exposing the truth of occupation brutality
in their journalism and in their martyrdom.
We bow our heads and draw in reverence for 86 Palestinian journalists and counting,
3 Lebanese journalists and counting, amongst a paradigm which minimises the importance of Arabic and Muslim lives.
As our media rings loudly with the silence —
not naming the deaths,
not naming the genocide,
not naming the mass worldwide plea for a ceasefire —
historic protests sing out in unison across the globe,
rising up against the historic war crimes and trauma in our thousands, in our millions.
‘Australian’ media has fed us Israeli propaganda for 75 years and counting.
Thanks to these journalists who risk their lives, more and more australians are learning the truth of occupation brutality.
We demand our media show integrity.
Honour these lives.
Name the apartheid,
the genocide,
the war crimes
and the ongoing illegal occupation
for what it is.