Yossi Waxman

"Four children were killed yesterday (Wednesday) in an Air Force raid on the

Gaza beach…

 

"Ismail Bahar (9), Ahed Bahar (10), Zakaria Bahar (10), and Muhammad Bahar (11), who were near an adjacent café, were killed instantly. Several other people were injured and taken for medical treatment…"

 

Haaretz, 17 July 2014

 

 

Four children on the beach of the same Mediterranean Sea shore that stretches
from Tel Aviv, via Jaffa and Gaza, all the way south to Alexandria. The beaches of my childhood, my family, my Mom and Dad, my uncles and aunts. In fact, the beach is everyone's.

 

I was born in Jaffa. Dad owned a cinema hall on Givat Aliya, Jabaliya.

 

It was from the Port of Jaffa that my grandmother, father, and aunt Ester set sailed in search of my grandfather, who had left for Europe in the 1930s.

 

It was from the Port of Jaffa that my grandmother and her family were exiled to Alexandria when World War 1 started because they were Russian Subjects and the Ottoman Empire deported them as enemies of the crown.

 

I made the trip from Tel Aviv via Rafah and El Arish to Nahal Yam and back for more than 2 years of my military service, riding a camels convoy to the beaches of the Laguna of Bardawil in northern Sinai.

 

The same sea. The same vistas. The same smells. The same sand. The same childhood and youth. And four kids - aged 9, 10, and 11 - are dead.

 

In my works, I chose do sink and drown them all in the Mediterranean Sea - perhaps because of the shame, perhaps to purge and cleanse them in the sea water, or maybe to kill the kids, my family members, the works of art, and then to revive them on my canvasses. To kill and revive.

 

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