A Personal Portrait of an Uprising

Snapshots, slingshots and other mementos at a West Bank exhibit tell the stories of 100 people killed in the territories by Israelis.

By DAVAN MAHARAJ, TIMES STAFF WRITER

A Personal Portrait of an Uprising — Los Angeles Times, 16 March 2001 — Los Angeles Times · Los Angeles, CA · 16 March 2001

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Transcribed from the clipping

RAMALLAH, West Bank—Some visitors to the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center here come to see the tan hiking boots once worn by Mohammed Durra, the slain 12-year-old whose picture—showing him cowering beside his father—has become one of the most incendiary images of the 5½-month-old intifada.

Others admire the roughly carved slingshot that 15-year-old Fares Odeh used to fling stones at Israeli tanks—until he took a fatal bullet in the neck. Or the unfinished piece of embroidery that Rahma Hindi, 54, was working on before she was killed by an Israeli missile.

The footwear, slingshot and stitchery are part of an unusual exhibit of photographs and treasured items belonging to the first 100 people killed by Israelis in the ongoing Palestinian uprising against rule by the Jewish state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The idea for the memorial exhibit was hatched in October when Palestinians were being killed in clashes almost every day, their identities unknown to the vast majority of their compatriots. Since the uprising broke out at the end of September, about 425 people have been killed, 80% of them Palestinians.

Organizers say the exhibit, funded by the Ford Foundation, is intended to help visitors see the dead as individuals, not mere statistics.

How this transcription was made

Date and publication rest on the collector's slide label; no masthead, folio or printed dateline appears on this clipping.

Context added by this archive

Clipped page, no masthead, no folio, no printed date; date is label-only. 'THE MIDDLE EAST' in the reversed black bar at the top is a SECTION FLAG, not a deck; the deck is the square-bulleted paragraph in column one, 'Snapshots, slingshots and other mementos at a West Bank exhibit tell the stories of 100 people killed in the territories by Israelis.' Note the deck's construction: 'killed in the territories by Israelis' — agency stated plainly, which is rare in this batch.

WORTH SHOWING MARIA: this is the densest clipping in Batch D for named Palestinians — nine people named, four of them dead, with ages, objects and a mother. The Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish is reported to keep an office on the second floor of the building. The paper also records the Israeli criticism of the exhibit and gives the Palestinian organiser the reply.

The spelling 'Fares Odeh' matches the Columbia Missourian letter on the same slide but the age, 15, does not match its 13, and neither matches the 14 of the Joel Greenberg dispatch on slide 69. Photo caption: 'Curator Samir Salameh places an item on display in Ramallah.' (Associated Press).

Column two and most of column three were read at page magnification; column one, the Laidi quotes and the closing paragraphs were transcribed from magnified crops. The printed text sets em dashes closed up without spaces, as transcribed.

Cite this clipping

"A Personal Portrait of an Uprising," Los Angeles Times, 16 March 2001. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2001-053. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2001-053