I Witness Silwan is a project in partnership with Madaa Creative Center, Silwan, Occupied Jerusalem
Madaa Creative Center’s Mission
~Build a safe, creative, and human rightsoriented space for the community, by engaging with children, youth, women, and men through activities and projects that empower them.
Strategic Objectives
~To contribute to the steadfastness of the Jerusalemite community.
~Empowerment of Jerusalemite women.
~Creating a secure environment for children.
We want to keep our children away from the violence, keep them from being arrested [by Israeli army]. We want to give them back a little bit of their childhood.
–Zuheir Rajabi, Director Madaa Creative Center, Batn al Hawa Branch, Silwan, East
Jerusalem
I WITNESS SILWAN
Public Art, Tourism, and International Solidarity in Occupied East Jerusalem
Madaa-Silwan Creative Center & US-based Art Forces
I Witness Silwan is an international public art project in support of Silwan’s fight against dispossession. Murals depicting the eyes of local and international leaders, activists, workers, and more, are scattered across the hills of Silwan, East Jerusalem and can be seen from miles away.
Detail, I Witness Silwan
Batn al-Hawa, Silwan, Occupied East Jerusalem
Jerusalem JerusalemJeee
Eyes Murals–Visible across the city.
Eyes of Community Member
Eyes of Ghassan Kanafani, writer, assassinated 1973
Eyes of Um Nasser, resident fighting dispossession
The staring eyes say to people that we see them and they should see us too…we want to say that we are here — we love our land and our home. –Jawad Siyam
Dispossession by religious settler “non-profits” such as Ateret Cohanim, threaten 750 to 800 people living in 15 buildings in Batn al-Hawa.These settler “non-profits” aim to dispossess all of Silwan’s Palestinian residents.
Hillside Batn al-Hawa
Eyes of Nizar Shweiki, Freedom Fighter
Eyes of Mohummad Fatafta, Freedom Fighter
Eyes of Community Member Freedom Fighter
Palestine Flower
Eyes of Hamad Moussa, Farmer
Image by John Halaka, Palestinian American artist.
Eyes of Che Guevara
Eyes of George Perry Floyd, Killed by police in USA
Eyes of Iyad el Halak, Killed by occupation forces in 2019.
Eyes of Bai Bibiyon, Lumad leader & organizer woman-chieftainin thePhilippines.
Image: Cece Carpio
Hillside Batn al-Hawa
Eyes of the Blind Man Who Consented to be Given Sight by Jesus at the Silwan Pools.
The Eyes of the Blind Man mural is installed across from the entrance to the Silwan Pools, where it can be seen by all who enter what is now an Israeli tourist site. This mural uses the bible story of the blind man to confront Israeli and Christian Zionism's use of scripture in their ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
By Sliman Mansour
Eyes of Rachel Corrie, American activist killed by Israeli occupation forces in Gaza, 2003.
Eyes of John Berger critic and writer.
Alex Nieto
American citizen killed by San Francisco police in 2014.
Image: Josué Rojas.
Image: Dennis Sullivan
Photo: Kobi Wolfe
Sliman Mansour
Killed at age 15 by settlers in Batn al Hawa.
Eyes of Milad Ayyash by
Denny Sternstein
Eyes of Malcom X by Emery Douglas
Eyes of Ishaq Maragha, martyred 1983, Image by Jos Sances.
Sigmund Freud, the Austrian-Jewish founder of psychoanalysis, grappled with the origins of Jewish identity in his last work, Moses, and Monotheism (1939). Edward Said, in his last work, Freud and the Non-European (2003), elaborates a vision of identity that is never whole or fixed, but contains foreign elements at its core. Said writes, “The complex layers of the past . . . have been eliminated by Israel.”
Batn al Hawa, Silwan, Occupied East Jerusalem
Neighborhood Murals–Local visibility
Victory – mural on Rajabi home
Chris Ghazaleh with I Witness Team
Photos: Afif Amireh
Local youth, Amir and Sara.
The Rajabi family has been fighting dispossession and its vissiccitudes for a decade.
Zuheir
Palestine Flower Eyes
Free Bird
Um Nasser’s House
Um Nasser and her family have been fighting displacement for 10 years.
Designed and painted with Um Nasser and family
Phots Afif Amireh, Jenan Maswadeh
Your Imagination is Limitless, and Your Mind is the Most Powerful Tool
Mural on kindergarten
Designed and painted by Chris Ghazala
Photo Afif Amireh
Batn
Wadi Hilweh, Silwan, Occupied East Jerusalem
–on street leading to Madda Creative Center
Gifts From the Sun
In 1994, total control over Silwan was given to "non-profits" and Israel Nature and Parks Authority. They use ‘heritage tourism to create a different political reality in Silwan’ and renamed Silwan "City of David", a bible themed tourist site with over one million visitors a year.
Designed & painted by Chris Gazala with I Witness Team & Community
The goal of the ”non-profits”, with full backing of the state of Israel, is to dispossess all Palestinians in Silwan and install Jewish settlers. Hundreds of Palestinians have already been dispossessed.
Designed and painted with Women of Wadi Hilweh
Ain al Loza, Silwan, Occupied East Jerusalem
Seeds Of Love
May 2022, the Rajabi home was demolished. 35 people were dispossessed, and a clinic.
“This earth, if it were in my hands, if I were able to flip this world, if I possessed the power to saturate this world, with seeds of love, so all the world is filled with trees of love, so love becomes the world, so loved becomes the way” –Fadwa Tuqan
"I choose journalism to be close to people, it may not be easy to change the reality but at least I was able to make that voice heard by the world" –Shireen Abu Akleh
Ain al Loza, Silwan, Occupied East Jerusalem
"My homeland is not a suitcase, and I am no traveler” Diary of a Palestinian Wound, Mahmoud Darwish.
I Witness Silwan Core Team
Among the many families facing eviction notices in East Jerusalem, Um Nasser A Rajabi, who lives in Silwan's Batin Al Hawa neighborhood, is one of the closest to me. I remember her bringing me a cup of tea and sitting next to me with tears in her eyes. I could see both sadness and strength as she talked about the recent clash near her house, her fear of tear gas being thrown at the children. She discussed how the murals made her feel reassured and safe. These invaluable and never-ending words of support from Um Nasser and all those around us show the steadfast desire of my people to live a peaceful, normal life.
–Manar Shereateh
For me, "I Witness Silwan" is a project of support, steadfastness, challenge, resistance, and delivering a message to the occupier. Sometimes we are there to draw and witness the attacks of the occupation army on the people and even on us while we are drawing.
–Jenan Maswadeh
I Witness Silwan is an act of visual decolonization, looking the “colonial gaze” in the eye, generating a global gaze. I Witness Silwan claims the right to look (Derrida) bearing witness to colonial violence and dispossession, and steadfast resistance, and encouraging solidarity.
–
Susan Greene, Director Art Forces, I Witness Silwan
I think this project will make people understand more of what is happening –whether people come to Silwan and see everything up close or see everything from a distance. We want everyone to know that we love life and want to live in peace –we want a flourishing life in our homes and neighborhood –and that our only wish is not to be deported from our homes.
–Zuhier Rajabi, head of Residents Council and Madaa Creative Center, Batn al-Hawa branch.
As a Palestinian American I learned so much more about my people’s struggle for self determination and justice in I Witness Silwan’s mural camp. The people of Silwan were part of the project every step of the way. The occupation is their daily struggle and I witnessed what art can do. I witnessed the hope that comes along with creating a narrative seldom represented and lifted up in a world which suppresses the voices of the oppressed.
