‘Facing Gaza’ in DC: An exhibit of startling Facebook mash-ups from the 2014 onslaught

FACING GAZA
by Robert Hardwick Weston, curated by Ahmed Mansour
displayed at the Museum of the Palestinian People
Washington DC, October 2-9, 2021

Like they say, “you can’t unsee it.” But does that mean you’ve got to go look at a whole art exhibit that shows the 50 days of “Operation Protective Edge,” Israel’s summer of 2014 attempt to bomb the people of Gaza into submission, or at least keep them down and miserable—“cutting the grass,” as the attackers like to joke? After all, there’s a flip side to the “can’t unsee it” phenomenon, which is that, in seeing it again and again, you can no longer really see it, that is, you find yourself desensitized. That’s another reason to spare yourself from looking at that art exhibit, right?

Maybe, but the exhibit we are talking about, “Facing Gaza,” by artist-scholar Robert Hardwick Weston, a professor of philosophy and human rights at a small liberal arts college in New York, has some novel features. It consists of montages (each one focuses on one specific day of the assault) that show images drawn from the Facebook posts of young Israelis—many of them apparently involved in the assault—combined with images posted the same day by Gazans who were under attack. Weston, without commentary, juxtaposes the two very different experiences. 

Hand cut photo collages from Robert Hardwick Weston’s Project “Facing Gaza” exhibition on display at the Palestine Museum in Washington DC from Oct. 2 to Oct. 9, 20201. Materials: photo paper and glue on paper. (Image: courtesy of the artist)

So, on one side of the presentation for, say, July 31, we see the smoke and flames, the rubble and the remains of human homes, and the human beings that the Israeli war machine was producing. On the other side, we see humans who are physically intact – indeed, they are young and notably buff—and who are living their life, including, it seems, life hard at work, helping get that “grass” under control. We don’t see images of the simultaneous activity of Israelis sheltering periodically from the small, unguided – but occasionally deadly – rockets fired by Hamas, or the firefights with Hamas and other militant groups. Weston says such scenes didn’t show up in any of the hundreds of posts he reviewed. Moreover, he was crafting an artistic work, not an objective reportage. 

The scenes of young Israelis cramming the bars in Israel during the operation, or posing or horsing around in uniform, are not themselves violent but are jammed in with the Gazans’ images of death and destruction. Weston’s art is to visually force the ghastly reality of Gaza under assault into the viewers’ perception of the Israelis, whether or not they are directly involved. Not surprisingly, Israelis compartmentalize their responsibility for Gaza’s suffering. Weston only presents what the young Israelis themselves chose to show to the world on Facebook, even as the operation was underway, but the effect is to invite viewers to decompartmentalize the linked realities of the two peoples. To see them together like this is not merely to see a less commonly shown part of the story of Israel-Palestine, it is to see images of the psychological reality of settler colonialism. 

Weston began years ago to download and catalog images from the profiles of thousands of Facebook users in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. At this point, he has amassed tens of thousands of posts, which are the raw material of his exhibit, which premiered at the Museum of the Palestinian People in Washington DC in October. Viewers, in effect, “face Gaza” during the 2014 attack by seeing into the minds of both sides: those trying to survive the bombings and intent on documenting the destruction visited upon their neighborhoods, and those so intent on showing themselves and their friends in classic selfie-Facebook style that Gaza seems, at most, little more than background scenery. The exhibit was curated by a young Palestinian filmmaker, Ahmed Mansour (“Brooklyn Inshallah”), who himself is a native Gazan and survived the 2014 bombing.

Inevitably, what draws most of the attention in the exhibit is not the assault per se but the cascading snapshots and selfies that the young Israelis posted at the same time their country was hammering the Palestinians of Gaza. Except for a couple of details, many pages show young people who look like they are out together on a camping trip, an outdoor barbecue or a pool party, or just goofing around with their frat brothers. The little details in the picture, of course, are the tanks and other war machines, the fatigues and combat gear, and the grotesque assault weapons often dangling from the young bodies. And, of course, there’s that background scenery. In many of Weston’s montages, he has placed the Israeli Facebook-stars inside the Gazans’ images of the destruction wrought by Israel’s soldiers. 

Hand cut photo collages from Robert Hardwick Weston’s Project “Facing Gaza” exhibition on display at the Palestine Museum in Washington DC from Oct. 2 to Oct. 9, 20201. Materials: photo paper and glue on paper. (Image: courtesy of the artist)

The Israelis might cry foul at this mash-up, in which they look like narcissistic Facebook users oblivious of being in a hell made in Israel. But Weston’s aggressive montages are justified by the fact that the party-time images were posted on the very same days as the scenes-from-hell images that they populate. Moreover, he’s making a deeper point about the moral blindness he sees among Israelis. In a few particularly disturbing juxtapositions, he has shown the collective nature of that blindness by using posts of nightclubs doing booming business back in Israel. The nightclubs are placed to look as if they are located, like hell, below the ground, while above we see the freshly gutted shells of people’s homes.

The Israeli images often show young men in combat uniforms or fatigues. Often shirtless, they display their lean male torsos, singly or in groups. Some gaze out at the cam fully in the buff except for skimpy Speedo loin coverings, as they lounge in or around a swimming pool or a bar, drinks in hand. When posing together they may look like jolly jocks kicking back or earnest young ballplayers ready to go kick ass in the second half. In solo selfies they may look available for a date, maybe smoldering with banked passion. Another common theme shows boys in fatigues just resting or even sacked out on a cot. Perhaps this is a way of conveying how exhausting the life of an Israeli soldier is during an operation. As always, Weston shows them right in the middle of the Palestinian hell and victims of the summer of 2014.

Hand cut photo collages from Robert Hardwick Weston’s Project “Facing Gaza” exhibition on display at the Palestine Museum in Washington DC from Oct. 2 to Oct. 9, 20201. Materials: photo paper and glue on paper. (Image: courtesy of the artist)

Meanwhile, all that their young Gazan peers can muster on their pages are more images of the same old same old—billowing black smoke towering high above their cities; rubble, rubble and more rubble; bomber jets streaking through the sky; people wandering stunned through their wrecked homes looking for missing family, friends, and household items; tiny children in tiny burial shrouds being carried by their parents; faces contorted by grief; a freakish, still-made bed sitting amid the ruins of a flattened house; maimed male bodies, etc. In a few instances, Weston juxtaposes Palestinian faces disfigured by pain and grief with Israeli lads whose faces are cracking up, but with laughter.

So, now that you have been briefed on “Facing Gaza,” you no doubt really, really would rather not look at it. Why go see the familiar, ugly facts of battered, bleeding, and beaten Gaza, made even more bitter by images of the apparent insouciant indifference of Israel’s youth? There is, of course, a certain moral duty to bear witness on the part of those who are safely away from such horrors, to take the ugly truth on board, which means to see it, not just to hear about it, and to carry that in the heart. It is a way to resist the evil that begets the ugliness. 

Robert Hardwick Weston, screenshot from video by Museum of the Palestinian People on “Facing Gaza” exhibit.

And there’s another possible reason to subject oneself to Weston’s painful art of witness: At some point, as you gaze with disgust, anger and even hatred at the seemingly obtuse Israeli kids, it may dawn on you that the very scale of their desensitization to the humanity of the Palestinians could unlock change. Brainwashed they may be, but these children of a prosperous society don’t look very hardened. Rather, they look like pretty typical members of the global youth culture, and so, very preoccupied with their image. Can that anxious psychology co-exist for long with enforcing Israeli apartheid? If they ever begin to glimpse the creepy way they increasingly look to the outside world (especially to their peers), which Weston’s art shows in all its depravity, maybe some of their hearts will begin to crack open. Maybe then they will be ready to see themselves as humans in the same picture frame – sharing one country—with those fellow humans, the Palestinians.

In the meantime, however, when the kids in these disturbing posts start looking back at you as individuals, it deepens the horror. You begin to register what the ever-harsher system has done and is doing to them—the faces of Israel. We really shouldn’t unsee that.

Plans are underway for an exhibition tour and a film version.

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