“The photojournalists are Palestinians and we have had to hide their identity to preserve their security since many of them are persecuted by the state of Israel,” he explains to El HuffPost Raquel Martí, Executive Director of the United Nations Agency for the Refugee population of Palestine (UNRWA Spain) and organizer of the exhibition Gaza through his eyes That begins Tuesday, September 23 at the Thyssen Museum in Madrid and will remain with the doors open until October 19. The 27 images that make up the gallery portray the horror of the massacre and the barbarism that the Palestinian people are living in the Gaza Strip from the military offensive that Israel took since 2023. Two years in which the photographs show the famine, the absolute absence of hygiene, the genocide to which they are being subjected and the small rays of hope that the children star.
“In spite of everything, you continue to see very young people smile because, of course, they are children and are not completely aware of what they are living. There is one of the images in which a dozen of them appear playing with the parachute of some supplies that had fallen,” Martí explains to this newspaper. The photographs are an extract of a heroic feat of the information professionals that are on the field and that they play their life day after day to teach the world the massacre.
“Many of the photojournists have destroyed the house, They have lost colleagues and have murdered their closest friends and family. They have to sleep in most occasions in the streets, in tents that constantly attack and continue to offer us these images. We have tried to be here in the exhibition, but no one can leave the strip. They maintain dignity and their humanity despite knowing that they are alone in the face of horror, “says Martí before the work of years of compilation of these audiovisual testimonies in which he emphasizes that” they will be fundamental so that in the day later he can document and have testimony of everything that has happened in Gaza.
Thyssen Museum in Madrid.
“There are no humanitarian places in Gaza. Please do not use this euphemism, because there is no safe place in the Gaza Strip. There is no place that has the necessary characteristics to welcome the displaced population. Israel is making the population in fields where there are no hygienic-sanitary conditions to make this population. There are no food, there is no water, there is absolutely nothing that guarantees the survival of the population, “Martí said about a constant reality in the territory and has left more than 60,000 people killed.
The image gallery has a special optics, an unusual sensitivity in the photographs that portray the war horror: they are taken by Palestinians, people who live there and who know who they are photographing. Not only bombings or murders that have become currents over the days, but also famine, lack of hygiene and daily exploits to achieve water and food. “Israel creates all the necessary conditions so that women cannot give birth. It has reduced the 400 humanitarian aid points to three that manage American mercenaries. There are half a million women and girls who suffer every month of anti -hygiene conditions and are stigmatized because they have no manner with menstruation, or what to wash in general. Thus are the people who are getting most spreading from diseases that also take their lives, “says Martí.
Throughout the last days, different Zionist organizations have tried to boycott the exhibition on the barbarism that the Palestinian people are living in the Gaza Strip by blaming a “clear anti -Semitism.” “The Thyssen museum unchanges art and points to anti -Jewish activism with this exhibition in which the UNRWA participates, the despicable UN agency that even had members participating directly in the massacre of 70,” said a recognized Zionist organization in social networks before the announcement of this new exhibition with which the Madrid museum begins its autumn season.
In the presentation of this Tuesday 23, where in addition to Raquel Martí, they have appeared the Minister of Culture of the Government of Spain, Ernest Urtasun, and Guillermo Solana, artistic director of the Thyssen Museum, The need to “arouse consciences” for all those who still deny or reject reality has been exposed that is being lived in the Gaza Strip. In addition, they have also wanted to show recognition to the “heroic acts” of anonymous photographers who play life every day to show the world what is happening. “Modestly, because it is a small exposure, we cannot show anything more than a corner of the immense devastation, of the immense ruin, of the enormous suffering of the Palestinian population. But it has a value of direct testimony, of living testimony, of eyewitnesses that, in addition, are protected witnesses,” Solana has detailed.
A mobile phone taking a photograph to one of the pieces of the “Gaza gallery through her eyes”.
The Ministry of Culture, headed by Ernest Urtasun, has pledged to continue promoting and giving visibility to these types of actions that put a magnifying glass in horror so that society does not forget tragedy, dead and blood. Unrwa, from Raquel Martí, explained the “precarious” financial situation that the entity lives and, despite the funds for the European Union or countries such as Spain, in two months they will not have more funds to pay the 12,000 workers in Gaza, the more than 4,000 in the West Bank or more than 33,000 in Syria. A situation that will make even more complicated for thousands of people who are in the middle of the conflicts.
In the midst of devastation and pain, this exhibition becomes a cry of memory and dignity. They are not just photographs: they are looks that go through silence, voices that refuse to be erased and fragments of life that challenge barbarism. Each image remembers that behind the statistics there is a face, a family, a story that deserves to be told. When touring the gallery, we not only contemplate the suffering of a people, but also the strength of their resistance and the hope that, one day, justice and peace will make their way to Gaza.
