Guernica in Palestine

I am presently on a two-week trip to Spain (hard living I know). We are in Madrid this week and yesterday, we went to the Reina Sofia to see Picasso’s Guernica. We all know the painting but it is definitely one of those that is even more powerful to see in person than it is on the page.

Now, there is nothing more ridiculous and shallow than claiming that seeing a famous work of art while on a sweet vacation in a great European city is some sort of act of solidarity. I mean, c’mon here. But, if art is supposed to do anything useful, it’s to make you think about representations of the world and how those representations connect the past with the present (or at least this is how my uneducated on art brain sees it). And it was impactful to see Guernica today while imagining the bombs raining down in Palestine. Picasso could have painted the same image about Gaza as about the Spanish Civil War, with all the same horror, outrage, anger, and disgust. In fact, I don’t even know how a supporter of Israel’s war in Gaza could see such a painting and not think they are wrong, but at the same time, I do not underestimate people’s ability to delude themselves.

Anyway, by now the death toll in Gaza is up to 23,000, the vast majority of which had absolutely nothing to do with the Hamas attacks on Israel. Even if you grant that Israel has the right to defend itself, I am not sure how the death of 23,000 people, many of whom are children, is self-defense by any reasonable or acceptable defense of the word. So as Netanyahu rains bombs down on Gaza like Franco on Guernica, I again ask how many people have to die to even the score for the October attacks in Israel? 50,000? 100,000? All of Gaza? If you are supportive of what Israel is doing, other than being supportive of something utterly monstrous, you have to actually answer the question. And since you cannot destroy Hamas (what would that even mean here, since the point is not the organization itself but what the desperation of the situation engenders???), you can’t just say “until Hamas is destroyed” because every bomb creates a new radical who wants revenge.