What can art do when babies are burnt alive, when homes are bombed to pieces, when teenagers are shot to death, when children are left without a father or mother, because they dared to challenge oppression?
What can art do when faced with one of the world’s mightiest armies funded by the most powerful states in the world, when killing squads break our doors at night and mobs uproot our trees and destroy our fields?
What can art do when we cannot trust each other and even fear ourselves?
What if art can maintain our humanity and our values, what if art can sharpen our senses and strengthen our steadfastness, and what if art can show us the path to freedom so that we do not get lost on our way there?
That is what we believe in and that is what we fight for.
We cannot do it alone and that is why…
We stand side by side with our resisting brothers and sisters; one refusing to buy from the oppressor, another holding a stone, the third holding a book, the fourth with a pen and paper, the fifth with a camera, the sixth with a brush and paint, the seventh with his voice, the eighth in prison refusing to eat, the ninth at university learning how to lead others, the tenth on stage, the eleventh locked in her room, imagining that she is a bird flying over the wall, the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth martyred, the fifteenth standing beside a hundred thousand others ready to liberate Palestine.
The Freedom Theatre
Image by Mahmoud J Alkurd
Full image available at Palestinian Arts Festival