Starvation by Dr. AbdalHadi Alijila Image: “How do you manage?” "That’s the question I keep being asked. But the truth is—I cried once. It was at the beginning of the genocide, when my mother said, “We left our home in Gaza. We are displaced.” That moment shattered me . Since then, the tears dried up. I didn’t cry when my niece was murdered. I only cried again when my mother was killed. The psychologists struggled to understand, and eventually a psychiatrist had to prescribe medication just so I could sleep. I take an amount if these pills, daily. I returned to painting—but every canvas is Gaza. Always Gaza. I feel crushed. Soulless. As if someone tore my soul from my chest and flung it into the air—wingless. My smile vanished. Gone, like a Nazi soldier stealing the belongings of a passing Jewish man. And now the Zionazi mindset thinks it can erase us too. But even if we are broken, even if our spirits are hollowed—we will still fight. For dignity For liberty For freedom We must hold the criminals accountable. Every horrific scene leaves a mark—like an X-ray in my brain. It snaps, it imprints, and then plays again in a cruel loop. One of those scenes is the flour massacre. I painted it. I crushed the colors, forced the brush—so that whoever sees it feels what I feel uneasy. " Dr. AbdalHadi Alijila
“How do you manage?” "That’s the question I keep being asked. But the truth is—I cried once. It was at the beginning of the genocide, when my mother said, “We left our home in Gaza. We are displaced.” That moment shattered me . Since then, the tears dried up. I didn’t cry when my niece was murdered. I only cried again when my mother was killed. The psychologists struggled to understand, and eventually a psychiatrist had to prescribe medication just so I could sleep. I take an amount if these pills, daily. I returned to painting—but every canvas is Gaza. Always Gaza. I feel crushed. Soulless. As if someone tore my soul from my chest and flung it into the air—wingless. My smile vanished. Gone, like a Nazi soldier stealing the belongings of a passing Jewish man. And now the Zionazi mindset thinks it can erase us too. But even if we are broken, even if our spirits are hollowed—we will still fight. For dignity For liberty For freedom We must hold the criminals accountable. Every horrific scene leaves a mark—like an X-ray in my brain. It snaps, it imprints, and then plays again in a cruel loop. One of those scenes is the flour massacre. I painted it. I crushed the colors, forced the brush—so that whoever sees it feels what I feel uneasy. " Dr. AbdalHadi Alijila

Documents

  • Dr. AbdalHadi Alijila
  • Starvation
  • Acrylic on Aquarelle fine grain paper
  • 10 x 12 in
  • Signature: Signature is on the Certificate of Authenticity
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In Native الفلسطينيون Dr. AbdalHadi Alijila’s harrowing account titled "Starvation," he portrays and condemns the horrific "Flour Massacre,” an appalling revelation exposing the moral corrosion of the IDF. The work reveals a relentless, cyclical suffering, its grim design imprinted in the hearts of all whom have witnessed these atrocities against Gaza. The painting's stark lines, portray shadowed disruptions mirroring the Palestinian struggle for basic human rights, as they expose the brutal crushing of Palestinian Modernism by successive colonial powers. The work evokes the haunting echoes of colonial atrocities, the grotesque spectacle of global imperial greed: flour, meant as sustenance, raining down from the sky, crushing the weak and vulnerable, as the bullets extinguish their lives.
Alijila's bold, yet understated strokes narrate the unspeakable, giving voice to the voiceless. His deliberate use of dissonance, disjunction, and precisely placed colors captures the agonizing immediacy of their existence. The world watches as Gaza starves, its pleas for aid met with violence and imprisonment.
This distinguished allegorical expressionism here infused with impressionistic softness, is rendered on fine grain paper. Alijila's signature *Hitsuzendō*-like still life brushstrokes, evoke with surgical precision the details, further intensifying the emotional impact. A cobalt-blue wash saturates the scene, a melancholic tide mirroring the impending tragedy about to engulf the vulnerable, as their innocent quest for survival is about to be shattered.

The bold color pallets he choose in this composition, present a desolate counterpoint of bone-white flour sacks and crimson red hues depicting the bloodstains, feels like a symbolic voice to the naive hope of the Palestinians juxtaposed against the calculated brutality of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). The Ghazzawi's trust once again shattered by the IDF's cruel entrapment here a devastating testament to the end of humanity . Amidst the brutality of this normalized violence, a profound spiritual inquiry unfolds through Dr. Aliljila's vision. He offers us an intimate vulnerability between a nuanced fragility and righteous fire of rage setting the worlds heart on fire from the callous indifference of more blood shed. He has turned himself into an emotional alchemist attempting to transmute the horrific violation of human decency into a meditative exploration of the tenacious survival instinct. Every brush stroke he is searching for beyond this nightmare, revealing to us how the our collective inherent purity is tragically suffocated by the merciless psychopathy of these perpetrators proudly killing innocent lives.

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