“Why did you leave the horse alone?” Fatin Farhat about genocide, ignorance and looking away.

Ramallah/Palestine

I visited Gaza a few times as a child and only twice as an adult. My last visit to the Strip was in 2020, a few months before the Covid-19 lockdown. On the surface, I was there to conduct a workshop on behalf of UNESCO to disseminate information about the 2005 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expression. In reality, this trip came after 20 years of attempting to get the proper clearances to enter Gaza through the Israeli Occupation. The visit (much envied by family and friends) was my chance to see old friends and colleagues segregated and isolated by the siege. Over five days, I visited numerous cultural spaces from Beit Lahia to Rafah, smoked hookah with friends I had not seen in decades, and engaged in numerous social and work-related conversations with artists and colleagues. Several Facebook-friends even showed up at my hotel to meet in person! The trip was my doorway to a part of my homeland, so near yet far away. While in Gaza, the borders were closed, Israeli shelling started, and I was stuck. I could not have been happier; I wanted to prolong my stay as much as possible. Since I could not leave the hotel then for security reasons, I would sit by the seaside and watch Israeli marine ships from a distance while the monotonous and continuous sounds of the surveillance drones echoed in my head. I was happy; I was home. 

For the past 365 days, I have watched my friends in the art field and beyond in Gaza being slaughtered like farm animals.  Over the past year, I have slowly lost my vocabulary, parallel to losing my faith in humanity. The Gaza death toll of over 41,000 Palestinians, including 16,500 children, is horrific. Israel’s genocide has wiped out at least 902 entire families At the same time, at least 1,364 families only have one surviving member, and at least 3,472 have only two survivors. The actual death toll of the genocide may not be known for many years, if ever, and will be higher considering deaths caused by famine, disease, and other estimates of deaths that Gaza health officials are unable to count. According to satellite analyses by Scher and Jamon Van Den Hoek, an associate professor of geography at Oregon State University, 56.9 percent of Gaza buildings were damaged or destroyed as of April 21, making a total of 160,000. UNICEF counted 408 schools damaged, representing at least 72.5 percent of its count of 563 facilities. Of those, 53 school buildings have been completely destroyed, and 274 others have been damaged by direct fire.

As far as culture and cultural heritage are considered, it is estimated that nearly 200 sites of historical importance have been destroyed or damaged in Israeli air raids on the Palestinian enclaves. At least 45 artists and cultural managers and 167 journalists were killed in Gaza in one year. More than 54 cultural centers out of 76 cultural centers registered with the Ministry of Culture were destroyed. The harm has also reached Gaza’s museums, public libraries, and parks. No space was spared. No one was spared. 

The reactions post-October 7/2023 were, of course, confusing and frustrating. It took the world, even some of our friends who were always advocates of the Palestinian cause, a while to speak up about the issue of Palestine. We had to be slaughtered in thousands for people to react. Many cultural centers, especially in Europe and the USA, acted as if the Israeli occupation in Palestine did not exist and that the whole conflict started in October 2023. Amid our new plight, we were forced to go back to history and remind our friends and foes that the genocide of the Palestinian people began from the onset of the establishment of the state of Israel. Over the past few months, we have come across several statements by European cultural foundations that referred to the brutal occupation of our land as a “conflict,” and that miserably failed to place our plight as a people in the proper historical context.

On top of that, several of our friends, colleagues, and others in the cultural sector and beyond were either canceled or censored. Our voices were attempted to be hushed, and we, as victims of decades of genocide, were requested to show understanding and patience. It was shameful. It still is. I sat in my living room in Ramallah watching the news, speechless, thinking of the tens of initiatives I had witnessed spring to support Ukrainian artists right after the Russia/Ukraine war. I remembered all the actions to sanction Russian artists from major venues worldwide. At the same time, the West went on a witch hunt against one of Palestine’s most pacifist resistance tools, BDS, and the university students’ encampments in the USA were demonized. 

The reaction at the level of the independent cultural sector was different yet limited partially due to limited access to funding and not out of lack of will. A couple of months into the genocide, several organisations, including Action for Hope, Ettijahat for Independent Culture, The Cultural Resouce and AFAC, and Aflamuna, among others, reached out. The main focus was to support the resilience of artists in Gaza, their safety, and their well-being. Although now there is space to support some art initiatives, the rehabilitation of Gaza’s destroyed cultural heritage infrastructure is a massive task that is not a current priority.  

The foundation of many of the Gaza artists’ support work is based on respecting the artists’ choices: to support the resilience of those who want to stay and help those who want a way out of the Strip. At present, and before the Rafah crossing border point was shut down by the Israeli occupation forces, tens of artists, designers, content creators, and architects managed to flee to Egypt. The truth is that the world considers caring for these artists a burden. When contrasted with the flight of Syrian artists to Europe after the 2011 revolution, the situation is simply disturbing. Many cultural centers and funders were eager to support the art movement for Syrian artists, and the exact opposite is witnessed in the Gaza case. Doors are blocked in their faces.  

Now, a year into the genocide, the call for a ceasefire has become obsolete. The situation on the ground in the Gaza Strip continues to be heart-wrenching, and the attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank are also accelerating. A few weeks ago, the “Gazation” of Lebanon was also commenced by the Israeli occupation. In almost two weeks, over 2000 Lebanese have been killed in air strikes, and Lebanese villages across the country were bombarded. Beirut is almost shelled every night, and over a million Lebanese have been displaced thus far. It is still premature to read into the magnitude of the damage inflicted on Lebanon’s cultural sector and heritage. At this point, we wish our friends and colleagues in Lebanon safety and sanity amid this madness. 

So what do we do now? Do we continue doing business as usual? No, it will not work. Our funders and partners were the first to impose sanctions on us and pull out. The escalated situation only revealed our institutions’ fragility and dependency on external aid. How can we break free? Can we break free? Can our work heal us from this trauma as individuals and as a community? How can we do that without compromising our integrity? Do we need to heal first before starting working with our communities? Should we continue exhibiting and producing in the world? Should we go back to the era of the 70s, when everything we did was about Palestine? What are the new expectations of world cultural venues for us? What kind of image do most of these galleries and art centers want us to display? What kind of an image do we want to present of ourselves? How will we shape our relationship with the world after the genocide? How do we interact with the world from now on, with the people who stood with us and those who failed to do so? These are only a few of the questions asked by Palestinian artists and cultural practitioners now. 

Meanwhile, what can you do for us as we navigate our healing process? Continue speaking on our behalf and being our voice in your communities. Plan more programs to support displaced artists and help create programs to support the artists who wish to remain in the Strip. Strengthen collaboration with Palestinian cultural organizations in Gaza/West Bank. Write about us and activate your social networks. Every single action, even if the smallest, could make a difference. 

*“Why did you leave the horse alone?

So that he keeps the house company

oh my son

for homes die if their residents

are gone,”

Mahmoud Darwish

Fatin Farhat

Fatin Farhat is a PhD researcher in cultural policy (University of Hildesheim), and facilitator of the Task Force for Cultural Policy- Palestine. Farhat has a long and intensive experience in cultural development and the management of cultural and artistic programs and has previously served as the director of the cultural and social affairs department at the Ramallah municipality and as the director of Khalil Al Sakakini Cultural Center. She has actively contributed to the development and establishment of numerous cultural initiatives and centres in Palestine and in the South Med region. She is a strong lobbyist for the decentralization of art and cultural practices and for the promotion of cultural development as an integral part of the local government’ mandate in Palestine. She has been involved in a series of cultural research, mapping and evaluation projects and interventions with many regional and international organizations. She is a member of the Expert Facility for the implementation of the 2005 UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the diversity of cultural expressions.