The #Kiasma_strike is about basic ethics. It is a call to hold accountable all parties that have financed, sponsored and supported, at any time, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

13.12.2022

I was born in a refugee camp in Gaza. In my childhood, I always asked my mother; why do people build and sell arms and weapons to kill us? She answered “It is profitable”. As a child I wondered about my price tag, and why can we not stop those who give weapons to the Israeli soldiers?! Zabludowicz family’s companies as an example.

The #Kiasma_strike is about basic ethics. It is a call to hold accountable all parties that have financed, sponsored and supported, at any time, crimes against humanity and war crimes. In this regard, criticism and moral demands toward the Zabludowicz Art Trust are simply justified, and the least to be done to not fail humanity today and join the strike.

Artists refusal to work with Zabludowicz's wealth and funds, contributing to artwashing and whitewashing crimes against humanity, is a powerful and a de-colonizing act which must be praised and celebrated in Finland, a country that suffered in previous wars and knows its cost.

Zabludowicz's wealth, which is built from the suffering of others, and the testing of military technologies on Palestinians for decades. This must be condemned, and called out as dirty, complicit, immoral and toxic which we all must stand to stop it together now to not happen again.

On the question of One or Two or Ten States:

The two state solution is dead and a trap. Israeli regime killed it before it was born long ago according to thousands of sources. A simple analysis of the hundreds of thousands settlers who moved to the Occupied West Bank can tell that Israel is not interested in any solution, they are only interested in colonizing more lands for their “God Promised Dream” and displacing more Palestinians. 

We can not speak about one, two or ten states or even no-states in the Palestine/Israel situation's context today. The Palestinian people's struggle and demands have rights, and political bases which must be embraced and must prevail, starting with the right for Palestinian refugees to return according to the UN resolution 194. The Palestinian and the larger solidarity movement worldwide are addressing the end of settler colonialism and apartheid practices as the beginning of a new era of decolonization, reconciliation, transitional justice and truth between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean sea.

Just check renowned human rights organizations around the world (Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, Alhaq, PCHR, UN, and B'tselem) which can tell of the ugly nature behind the Israeli regime.

https://btselem.org/publications/fulltext/202101_this_is_apartheid

For the above reason and more: Everyone should expose Zabludowics’s complicity with Israel and other repressive regimes, and no one should allow themselves to be commodified under the Zabludowics’s brand.

Think of Gaza's latest brutal aggressions and erasure of complete families and neighborhoods, think of Palestine/Iraq/Afghanistan, and all the victims of such arms trade.

Majed Abusalama 

Palivoices