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THE Morning Star’s German sister paper Junge Welt launched an exhibition of a Palestinian artist’s work at its Berlin HQ today.
Until the morning of the launch nobody knew where al-Hawajri, whose Gaza City studio has been reduced to rubble and who has had to flee his home like 85 per cent of Gaza residents, was.
At the Friday evening reception for the annual Rosa Luxemburg conference organised by Junge Welt they feared the worst. Relief was palpable when Professor Norman Paech told today’s gathering he had managed to make contact. Al-Hawajri is in a refugee camp and his home has been destroyed by Israel: but he is alive.
His exhbition — entitled Guernica-Gaza — was originally displayed in Kassel in 2022. Adapting famous works by great painters but with additions referencing Israel’s brutal occupation of Palestine — in one snoozing farmers by a haystack have a backdrop of tanks and marching troops — it immediately caused controversy. German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier even accused it of anti-semitism.
But Professor Paech was having none of it and bought the artist’s works with the intent of giving the Palestinian artist the audience he deserved. He spoke at the launch of the exhibition today, rejecting as slander the idea that for portraying Palestinian suffering, the artist could be accused of anti-semitism.
A pro-Israel demo marched past the opening, some marchers turning to yell abuse at those showing up to attend. But they were not intimidated.
Banners and chants on the annual march to lay flowers on Rosa Luxemburg’s tomb earlier today proclaimed that Palestine will be free: that was the sentiment that drew art lovers and socialists together for the launch of Gaza-Guernica.
