- When I started to show people pictures from Gaza, they had never seen those images, Greek-Palestinian artist tells Anadolu

ATHENS 

In Athens, a Greek-Palestinian artist is leading an initiative with one simple objective: to show the world visual proof of what Israel is doing to the Gaza Strip and its people.

For Mirei Al-Sayyed, this is her way to overcome what she says is the biased coverage of Western media outlets.

She is the curator of ‘Is Anyone Alive? The Language of Communication in Gaza,’ an exhibition of photos capturing the harrowing scale of the death, destruction and human tragedy unfolding before the world’s eyes in the besieged Palestinian enclave, where at least 11,500 people, including more than 7,800 children and women, have so far been killed by Israeli bombs.

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Photo exhibition opened in Athens that sheds light on Gaza's sufferings

“Every day, I kept seeing the number of our dead people rising, and then I saw a video of a father calling for his kids, then his neighbors, friends, and colleagues. And at the end, he fell on the ground and screamed: ‘Is anyone alive?’ So, then I realized this is the language of communication in Gaza,” Al-Sayyed told Anadolu about the title of the exhibit.

“They (Gazans) have stopped calling names. They are just looking for survivors.”

Her main aim is to raise awareness of the situation in Gaza, particularly among European and Western audiences, who are not aware of the scale of destruction caused by Israel.

“The idea of the exhibition came from the people. We were always discussing the situation with friends and colleagues. When I told them we had to do something, they were saying the situation is not that bad. When I started to show them pictures from Gaza, they said they had never seen these pictures,” she said.

The reason is not people’s ignorance but the Western media’s obvious pro-Israeli bias, she asserted.

“I realized that If I open my TV in Greece, the Western media will not show me the situation,” said Al-Sayyed.

She said the exhibit had drawn visitors from around the world and many European states such as France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany, as well as many Greeks.

“Almost all of them leave here with sadness, a kind of grief. They end up crying or they sit on the floor to contemplate what they just have witnessed. They ask me where I found the pictures and when I tell them it is all on Instagram, they get even more depressed, and start questioning everything,” she said.

For Al-Sayyed, this proves how the Western media overlooks, distorts and mispresents the reality in Gaza, where she said – and many experts around the world, including from the UN, agree – Palestinians are facing a genocide.

What is happening in Gaza is nothing but a second Nakba, she added, referring to the forced displacement of over 700,000 Palestinians from their homes and lands for the creation of Israel in 1948.

This also shows that more needs to be done in every way possible to let the world know about what is really going on, she said, reiterating that the reality is totally different than what people are being told by Israel and the Western media.