• 12 to 7 PM : Loss of Innocence: Exhibition of Children’s Art from Gaza by Rod Cox
• 5.30 PM : Rod Cox will give a tour of the exhibition
• 7.30 PM : Gideon Levy, Haaretz journalist and author of The Punishment of Gaza (Verso) & Khaled Al Awasi from Dundee/Hebron.

Loss of Innocence - background by Rod Cox
The Exhibition comprises about 50 pictures, drawn, painted or crayoned by children in Gaza, some immediately after, or even during the Assault by Israel on Gaza over the New Year 2008/9, and some drawn a little later. The later pictures were either drawn as part of a programme of Psycho-Social Help for the Traumatised Children, or by children who were specifically asked by me to set out their feelings for the benefit of Westerners understanding.

The pictures show the idealised life that children have of life in a peaceful Gaza, and panel by panel shows the assault develop, the deaths and trauma, and the aftermath, culminating in expressions of Resistance, and what we can do to help - make contact and show that their suffering has not gone unnoticed.

I went to Gaza in 1970, before settling down to the usual family life in England. But the constantly deteriorating situation eventually drove me back to Gaza on the second FreeGaza Boat, and then again after the Invasion on the overland convoy that arrived in early March. I realised that it was not really enough to go there and show solidarity - although it is a lot, and warmly loved by Gazans. What is necessary is to get the reality of life in Gaza out to ordinary folk in the UK, and I resolved to do this by collecting pictures by children, since they have a raw emotion, simple to understand, whether they are 'Works of Art', in a western Sense, or not.

In the two months that I was there on that occasion, I became more involved in the trauma management side of life, and the peeling back of the extremely friendly, polite and hospitable exterior of almost all Gazans to reveal the dread and loneliness underneath, convinced me that this was an aspect of Israel's punishment of Gaza that must be shown, and that the kids pictures would do it best.

I filled a large van with Art, but was not allowed to take it out of the country by the Egyptian Authorities, and so I simply carried what I could, and the Exhibition and its commentary, are the result.

http://rodcoxandgaza.blogspot.com/