The attempt to erase human memory is not limited to the barbarians of ISIL. Israel has done the same thing to the Palestinians, destroying buildings sacred to Muslims and Christians in its attempt to wipe out the reality of Palestine. And, as with ISIL in Iraq, the physical destruction is mirrored by the continuous human suffering.
All of which can make the recent artwork from British artist Banksy seem frivolous. The artist, who is famously anonymous, went to Gaza and painted some of his famous murals. The resulting video has been viewed more than a million times in three days.
One of the paintings is of a cat appearing to play with a (real) twisted ball of metal, a remnant of last year’s military assault on Gaza. In one sense, that could be seen as making fun of mass murder. But in a world that appears to have grown weary of the daily grind of awful news from what is now the longest running military occupation of the modern era, perhaps a painting of a cat can bring the horror what Israel is doing back to the forefront of the public’s mind.
