A Personal Crusade: Children of the Intifada

By Pat McDonnell Twair

When Heather Spears, a commercial artist in Copenhagen, went to the West Bank and Gaza last spring, she told Israeli officials her visit was to draw historic sites of the Holy Land. Six weeks later, she completed 300 sketches of the wounded children of the intifada. She was able to get them out of Israel with the help of a diplomat.

Spears, who was married to a Jew, says she was pro-Zionist until she became acquainted with Palestinian refugees in Denmark in 1987. "It was painful and very difficult to shift my mind and heart from the Israel I had always admired," she stated. Nonetheless, once committed to learning more about the tragedy of the Palestinian people, she raised $1,000 from the Canadian Council of Churches and a Danish peace fund to travel to the occupied lands.

In hospital wards and operating rooms, refugee camps and West Bank villages, and even military courtrooms, Spears rapidly sketched traumatized and wounded Palestinian children. Her medium was pencil and chalk on brown paper.

Informing the Uninformed

A catalogue of 75 sketches from her exhibition of the drawings is entitled Drawn from the Fire: Children of the Intifada. Spears sells the paperback at public lectures to finance an odyssey through Canada and the United States to inform the uninformed of the indiscriminate carnage suffered by Palestinian youth.

The artist's sketches are all the more poignant for the Arabic handwriting accompanying each sketch which explains how each child was wounded. The story of Muhammad Abu Akr states:

"I was shot on August 6th by Israeli soldiers and they meant to kill me. I was on my way to my cousin's house and the women of the camps saved me. I was carried to the hospital in Bethlehem and then to Makassad Hospital in Jerusalem for surgery. In the beginning they removed 40 percent of my intestine. After two weeks, as I was bleeding, I had another operation and they cut the rest of my intestines away. So I was flown to America to be given a transplant. They could not make the operation in America, as it would have been the first of its kind in history. So now I am living by getting nourishment through my veins."

As she shows a slide of her sketch of the seriously wounded Muhammad, it becomes clear that the Canadian-born artist has made his plight a personal crusade. Spears explains that in October his gangrenous gall bladder was removed.

The day he returned home, the Israeli military took him and held him for three hours," she reports. "His incision opened the next day and, after a weak of hospitalization, the military again entered his home, threatening to take him hostage again if his brother, Nidal, did not give himself up. They beat his mother, smashed furniture, and confiscated his scrapbook. Nidal then gave himself up. Muhammad has again been threatened that he will be taken hostage for other wanted youths."

A sketch of Ameena, a twelve-year-old Palestinian girl injured in the head by a rubber bullet, taken from Heather Spears' Drawn from the Fire: Children of the Intifada.

Spears emphasized that Muhammad is on a hyper-alimentation machine 12 hours a day and that his confidence and morale are waning. Fortunately, Dr. Anthony Sahoun has established a fund for him. Checks can be sent to Dr. Sayhoun at: New England Deaconess Hospital, 185 Pilgrim Rd., Boston, MA 02215.

Although visibly angered by the Israelis' intentional policy of targeting children, Spears does not allow emotions to color her descriptions of what she has seen. "Americans would not stand for it if their children were hurt and abused as these Palestinian youngsters are," she asserted. "In fact, from a ratio standpoint, the number of wounded Palestinians would equal five million Americans, and half of the wounded are children."

She noted the 45 percent of the shootings and beatings inflicted by Israelis on Palestinians do not occur during clashes between soldiers and demonstrators, at all. Clashes during Israeli raids on villages are the second largest cause of injuries. Actual rock-throwing demonstrations rank third in casualties.

"Children aren't even safe inside their homes," Ms. Spears told a radio talk show host. "Parents of one child I drew wrote that his hands were broken by a soldier in front of his mother in their kitchen."

The radio host then asked, "Well, wouldn't some people say why don't you stop throwing rocks and we won't break your hands?"

Spears retorted: "That's much like saying why don't you put down your rocks and enjoy living under a harsh occupation?"

The catalogue includes a sketch of Samet, 5, whose skull was fractured by the rifle butt of an Israeli soldier, and a shepherd boy, Anwar, who lost an eye and his right testicle, and sustained crushing wounds on his legs when a grenade was tossed at him from an Israeli jeep. Her drawings of actual surgery to cut away flesh of young children to remove bullets rival the camera for their meticulous detail.

Spears has been giving her slide presentation since September to schools and peace groups. She finds that Catholic schools are more open to her presentation than public schools. In the latter, all too often, phone call campaigns asking school officials to "balance" her talk eventually lead to a cancellation.

"Students ask me why, if the Israelis are so oppressive, the Palestinians don't leave," she continued. "Then I must explain that Palestine is their land, and that there is nowhere to go. It is hard for the students to comprehend, but once they do, they are fired up by the injustice."

Although it is unlikely the Israeli government would grant her another visa, Spears would like to return and sketch the soldiers. "It upset me whenever I looked at those soldiers. They all looked like my sons."

She hopes to bring the exhibition of her sketches to the US, and then to have them published in hardcover by a publisher in Kuwait.

Pat McDonnell Twair is a free-lance writer based in California.