The Sons of Eilaboun, Oct 12, 2001
In the morning of 31-10-1948, the Israeli Army entered the Village of Eilaboun. In that day my Uncle Badia was killed by the Israeli army along with 12 young men from Eilaboun, and my father and his family turned to refugees, fortunately for a short time.
For those who were killed in the massacre of Eilaboun, Palestine 30-10-1948.
Get Hi-Res Poster of this art!
Analyses by Dr. Edward Badeen, Basel, Switzerland
In this work of art called “The Sons of Eilaboun” one can see several factors working on the viewer – not necessarily all these factors are consciously aimed at by the artist himself while at work.
To the upper left we see the wide-awake blood weeping face, which represents an ever awake and vivid memory of the massacre of Eilaboun, when this village in Galilee has been bereaved of its 16 innocent unarmed civilian villagers on the 30 of October 1948.
The stone plate could stand for that of the Ten Commandments, in which it says: You shall not kill! The Israeli soldiers trespassed against this commandment, when they killed the above mentioned youngsters in cold blood!
In the Arabic text it says: The olive trees screamed when our life was torn apart! Why the olive trees? Because the rest of the villagers were commanded to leave their village to Lebanon on foot, which took them about three days march only a few elderly people who could not walk anyhow, remained at home – and this split is represented by the crevice of the stone. On the other hand, in the villagers’ memory, time has been cracked between what before and what after the 30th of October 1948, just as Americans and indeed the whole world now a days talks of the time before and after the 11th of September 2001.
On the left part of the stone we find the names of the victims in Arabic – however you could hardly read them. Who can remember their names except for their relatives and personal friends? But the massacre itself will be craved in the collective memory of a whole nation, which is true for all massacres!
The stone is “getting old”, but there are fresh shadows representing a recurring memory, or are they the spirits of the dead haunting their killers? The shadows of the birds are the shadows of the souls of the dead, bringing back their memory.
Two pieces of paper, one old and one new, lay on the ground! The old one could stand for the Zionist Archive, in which the truth or part of it was hidden. Now that this Archive is opened for historians, a historian from the village wrote and published recently (the new piece of paper!) a book about Eilaboun and the massacre fills an important part of it.
There is the smaller tombstone with a cross and a bird on it. The cross is a direct symbol of the fact that the victims this time were Christians. The bird is a hope for life and future.
We see an iron railing shadow falling on the ground and partly on the tombstone, a symbol of the Palestinians being under siege. On the right side we see not a shadow this time, but a real machinegun, symbolizing the on going killings of civilians, not only Palestinian children under Israeli occupation, but also non Jewish Israeli citizens as well.