Members from the London Visual Activist Collective (LVAC) met outside Downing Street yesterday to remember all of the 500 children in Gaza who were killed by Israel during Israel’s 2014 ‘Operation Protective Edge’.
LVAC members spread a unique paper doll chain measuring over 160 metres in length and made by people from the UK, containing over 550 cut-outs of kids, entitled “Empty Spaces”, to signify the empty spaces left in the world because those children were killed.
LVAC members stated that the organisation “wished to convey to the people of Gaza and Palestine in general, that we have not forgotten about them”.
Activists put cut-outs, of the 550 children, killed in the assault on #Gaza. Pls RT. #DowningStreet #London #BDS pic.twitter.com/jE58248pRq
— BDS_Queen (@BDS_Queen) August 29, 2016
In response to the children killed in the 2014 offensive, the group had the following to say:
They would still be riding their bikes and mothering their dolls.
They would still be sleeping in their beds and in their fathers’ arms.
They would still be answering back in the cheeky way that kids do.
They would still be playing in the school yard – Football, Hopscotch, Hoopla, Tag.
In #London Sunday 28th?
Show some support for this event in memory of #Gaza's children#FreePalestine
> @LVAC_Tweets pic.twitter.com/dn9kL7xdeF— Number Monkey (@NumberMonkey69) August 27, 2016
But they don’t do any of that anymore because Israel removed them from the world.
All that remains now are empty spaces.
Empty beds, empty fathers’ arms, empty school desks, empty seats in class, empty souls of the parents, empty hearts of the school friends left behind.
These children are now gone forever and an empty space remains.
The parents and siblings are still there, having to endure each waking moment in grief.
The pain does not go away once the bombs stop falling and because the news cameras have stopped rolling.
(PC, Mondoweiss)
