Gaza kids art proves Israeli war crimes: activist

[Scurrilous]

<snip>

"A picture speaks louder than a thousands words, says a U.K. peace campaigner trapped in Gaza for helping its children express the horrors they experienced in the latest Israeli offensive through artistic drawings that he plans to take global as evidence of war crimes through children's eyes.

For 63-year-old peace campaigner Rod Cox, what started as a small project to collect samples of children's drawings depicting Israeli war crimes in Gaza has ballooned into a cultural and artistic exchange project linking Palestinian school children with their British counterparts.

Dramatic new evidence of Israeli attacks on the people of Gaza emerged when Cox handed children in Gaza paper, pencils and crayons and asked them to express themselves and speak their minds.

Rod Cox is set to present these portraits among others as evidence of war crimes committed against Gaza civilians to the International Criminal Court, which in a ground-breaking move in the case of Darfur, used children's art as credible proof to start proceedings against Sudanese government officials accused of committing war crimes.

"Children’s witness statements and explanations of what they went through is a significant and important source in a case like Gaza," said Cox."

more

[stray cat]

1. Last I saw a painted picture doesn't hold up as legal proof of much

They do suggest exposure to violence but wars are violent so that is no surprise. There may be valid evidence but none of us want a legal system where someone can paint a picture of us doing something and we will be guilty.

[Fozzledick]

2. So my drawings as a kid are proof of Martian war crimes?

Those ray-guns did terrible damage! :eyes:


on edit: That drawing of a skeleton in a black hooded cloak with the Star of David on it's back is amazingly realistic! Pat Oliphant couldn't have done better!!1!

[Jefferson23]

5. Fozzle Dick, here are other drawings by children you can mock:

Drawings at the link.

Children of Darfur Exhibit at the MLK Library

Type Africa Action event
Start Date March 1, 2009
End Date April 29, 2009
Website www.dclibrary.org
Location Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library
901 G St NW # 400
Washington, DC 20001


Children are the youngest survivors of the genocide in Darfur, and their drawings depict the atrocities that they face. Dr. Jerry Ehrlich, a pediatrician from New Jersey, collected drawings from children in Darfur while he was working in one of the camps for internally displaced people. Africa Action has converted these drawings into an exhibit to help remind people of the on-going genocide in Darfur.

“I spent 2 months during the summer of 2004 as a volunteer for Doctors Without Borders caring for children in a medical center at a camp for internally displaced persons in Darfur, Sudan. I wanted to document the plight of the people through the eyes of children. I brought with me 25 boxes of crayons and about 400 pieces of drawing paper. They were given out to children between the ages 8 and 12. I asked them to draw about their lives in Darfur and return 7-8 drawings for me to take home as a remembrance. As the children brought back the drawings they were placed in my daypack under my medical instruments. At the end of the day they were hidden in a Sunday edition of The New York Times that I brought with me. That's how I was able to get them out of the country. As you view the drawings their message is obvious. They depict the atrocities these children have gone through and still unfortunately live with.” ~Dr. Jerry Ehrlich

The exhibit is made up of eight children’s drawings in 24”x36” format and an introductory piece of the same size that explains the exhibit and invites people to Just L.E.A.D.

The exhibit is currently at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library

If you would like to host the exhibit feel free to contact us at outreachafricaaction.org and we will do our best to add you to the schedule. http://www.africaaction.org/events/index.php?op=view&eventid=1789

[Fozzledick]

7. No, those aren't so blatantly set-up

The children, aged six to 18, were given drawing materials and asked to depict their dreams for the future and their strongest memory.

Waging Peace's website explains: "While a handful of children had submitted drawings of daily life in the village or in the refugee camp, the majority of the drawings described the attacks on their village by Sudanese Government forces and their allied Janjaweed militia.

vs.

"The plan at first was to compile a few drawings as samples of war crimes through children's art. But as I remained stuck in Gaza over border crossing issues the project has spiralled into a traveling exhibition," Cox told AlArabiya.net.

The first group were unprompted and spontaneous. The second were solicited as part of a self-serving propaganda project.

[Jefferson23]

8. According to you, we'll see what the ICC decides.

[Jefferson23]

3. In another case this finding was made:

snip** "around 500 drawings from Darfuri refugee children have been accepted by the ICC as contextual evidence to be used in any trial of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir."

article in full: Darfuri children's drawings offer evidence of war horror

http://www.alertnet.org/db/blogs/44339/2009/02/5-181142-1.htm

[Scurrilous]

4. Very interesting.

Thanks for posting. :thumbsup:

[Jefferson23]

6. You're welcome, will be interesting to see what transpires from this

considering that Israel may not agree to a probe.

[Igel]

11. Good evidence of psychological state.

What, exactly, created it can be a bit of a question.

They can be reporting what they've heard or seen, real or not (my kid is currently terrified of creatures that resulted from humans' exposure to some green glarp that came up from the earth's crust ... you watch old Dr. Who episodes and you get such things).

Sometimes it's pressure to repeat what's been said by peers or authority figures, esp. when it's between two groups with rather well defined boundaries. Hate is taught, and myths and stories accentuate the boundaries.

In other words, yeah, there's a psychological state. They're disturbed. Figuring out *why* can take a while.

Sometimes they draw and repeat what they've experienced. If they're drawing things they couldn't have seen in any way other than reality--if they have no tv, magazines, etc., and their drawings are sufficiently lifelike--it's probably good evidence. But you need for *them* to provide all the information. (It's why when I'm in charge of a quasi-public event involving food and somebody I don't know wanders in for food I ask him if he's there for the quantum theory workshop, or something equally foreign to the event's purpose. If they nod and say, "Yes," I expel them; I do things Slavic and linguistic. If they look confused, or say they're in the wrong place, I ask what they're there for. *They* provide the information, I'm not going to participate in my being bamboozled.)

Take the day-care and private-school sex-abuse hysteria from the '80s. A number of schools were shut down and people's lives ruined because kids made up stuff, repeated stuff, gave the answers that they thought the adults wanted. The testimony showed something--but not what the courts believed.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

9. "Proves?"

"Provides evidence of", I might buy.

"Proves" is just silly.

[grassfed]

10. thanks for posting - nt

[Idealism]

12. I don't believe this will be admitted into evidence of any ICC court.

A shame, but this should not be needed to prove that the law was broken.

[EFerrari]

13. It doesn't matter if the ICC admits this material or not. The court of public opinion

will come to its own conclusion.

When I was a grad at Berkeley, there was a huge display in Dwinelle Hall of similar material out of Guatemala, from the US backed genocide there mounted by the oligarchy via their military. No one who saw all those drawings could have any doubt whatsoever about what happened.

That display was taken all over the world and even as late as two years ago, the work was still traveling and even at auction to raise money for Guatemala.