International solidarity with Palestine from the north of Istanbul: the exhibition “Drawings for a mute world”
“Don't stop talking about Palestine until it is free”
Milena Rampoldi, July 5, 2026
The exhibition in Kayaşehir, one of the northernmost districts of the European part of Istanbul, entitled Sessiz Kalan Dünyaya Çizgiler (“Drawings for a mute world”) is an exhibition according to the principle of street museum pedagogy, which is as significant as few other forms of postmodern museum pedagogy. Milena Rampoldi of the organization ProMosaik visited this exhibition for Tlaxcala.
Since human rights and therefore children’s rights concern everyone, this impressive exhibition is located right on the street, near the neighbourhood’s central mosque and next to the subway station, and highlights how people around the world silence and relativize or put human suffering into brackets when it comes to Palestine and Palestinian children.
Against this deliberate silence, which bends to the Zionist commitments of the hasbara and is a guilty victim of the neo-colonialist and expansionist obsessions of the State of Israel, this exhibition sends a clear signal, by expressing its protest in a completely anti-elitist manner. Exhibitions like this are not something for culture buffs, but a visual cry against the injustice of the world.
The artistic form of cartoons and illustrations is very effective because it addresses the new generation, using language to defend human rights. It is an exhibition that is also presented in Istanbul as a traditional exhibition, for example, at the cultural and artistic centre of the municipal administration of Başakşehir, a district of the Turkish metropolis, located south of Kayaşehir.
As the illustrators of the Human Movie Team media project (Turkish: İnsan Film Ekibi) rightly state:
We are all Palestinians. Palestine concerns all of us. And the murdered future of Palestine is our future and the future of our children. The Human Movie Team is a project launched as an association in 2015 by a group of young women. The aim of the project is to raise awareness in the field of human rights and in particular of human rights violations, especially against Muslim populations, including the Rohingya.
Illustrations like this remain in people’s minds and hearts, according to the principle “a picture expresses more than 1000 words”. Human rights pedagogy uses postmodern visual language and denounces human rights violations by the Zionist State of Israel in Gaza. The exhibition also opposes any linguistic censorship and openly pronounces the word “genocide” on its posters.
Let’s now see a selection of illustrations whose Turkish texts I have translated into English for the English-speaking public. Some illustrations contained texts in English. The watermelon symbol is shown as a recurring symbol of solidarity with Palestine and its justified resistance to the Israeli occupation, as can be seen in this association banner:
The watermelon symbol recalls its use after the 6-Day War in 1967. At that time the watermelon replaced the Palestinian flag banned by Israel, since the watermelon has exactly the same colours as the Palestinian flag. After the war between Hamas and Israel, in the aftermath of 7 October 2023, the symbol of the watermelon returned to being widely used in social media to express solidarity with Palestine and resistance to Zionist neocolonialism in the occupied territories.
This creative protest of the “Battih” (so the watermelon is called in Arabic) is also joined by the Turkish illustrators of this exhibition. In my opinion, a key message especially addressed to German readers is the following: Do not ask yourself if the watermelon could be an anti-Semitic symbol but perceive how anti-Jewish and anti-Semitic the Zionist state and its expansionist obsession are.
In this image, the recurring symbol of the watermelon is associated with the invitation to never be silent when it comes to Palestine.
“Never stop talking about Palestine.”
This illustration shows the perfect normality and standard road sign outside the world of Gaza, which is turning into an anti-world. This is no longer about slowing down to pay attention to children near a school. In fact, Gaza lacks both schoolchildren, killed by Israeli airstrikes, and school buildings, razed to the ground by the Zionist air force. The school is the symbol of knowledge, pedagogy and the future of a country. And Gaza is the exception, the anti-world in the absolute sense.
Gaza lacks not only children, but also mothers. There are 9,000 mothers killed by Israel. These moms don't have faces. A mother shows us her long Muslim scarf. We only see her back, but what we notice is her movement. Unlike the 9,000 victims, this mother is still alive and moving forward. The veil, the dress and even the foot symbolize the dynamic strength of the Palestinian woman. The Palestinian woman is the backbone of the anti-Zionist resistance.
In this illustration two main symbols of Palestinian resistance are combined: on the one hand, the symbol of the watermelon in response to the 1967 Zionist ban on using the Palestinian flag and, on the other, the symbol of the key, the counterpart of the nakba, the expulsion of Palestinians, who have the right to return to their homes and therefore still have the keys to their homes in hand. The right to the flag and the land is reflected in the right to one's homeland and one's home.
The gravedigger does his job. He does not stop, because all the victims have the right to be buried, respecting their human dignity. In Islam, burial is the beginning of the path to the afterlife. But at the same time, the illustration in the colour of blood, red, shows the number of innocent victims, which has already reached 18,000. The identical burial of all shows that all the dead are equal. But at the same time the nameless tombstones show how the dead seem to have no meaning in this mute world.
Like the mother shown just now, the girl here is also shown faceless. But there is a big difference between the symbols of the two illustrations. The mother moves and is the living symbol of Palestinian resistance. The girl, on the other hand, stops. The 10,000 children killed by Israel do not live anymore. However, the birds fly. And these birds symbolize the continuation of the lives of Gaza's children in the afterlife. The image makes me think of the novel "Sadako wants to live" by Karl Bruckner, which talks about the child victims of the US nuclear attack on Hiroshima in August 1945. In Bruckner's novel, while she had leukaemia, which meant her death sentence, Sadako folded hundreds of cranes.
Following the principle of Niccolò Machiavelli’s “Prince”, people learn nothing from history. The Zionist state learned nothing from the suffering of Jews during the Holocaust. At the same time, Israel repeats the attacks on Gaza as if they were the expression of a brutal rite that continues to bomb innocent children, only it does so with ever better and technologically optimized weapons, making more use of the cold and irresponsible Artificial Intelligence.
The text of this illustration is one of the most evocative in the exhibition and comes from a mother who this time statically shows her bleeding hands and her suffering face.
Her words, in English translation, are as follows:
“My name is Selma. 2 of my children were murdered today in Gaza. I have my children’s red blood on my hands. I don’t want to wash my hands, because the only thing I have left of my children is this (this red blood on my hands)!”
Her hands are raised towards the sky. This may mean, on the one hand, that resistance to the occupation gives way to her endless suffering for the loss of her children and, on the other, that she raises her hands to Allah, by entrusting her life to Him.
Here it reads:
“They only gave him permission for 1 day…”
This sentence means that the Zionist army decides on life or death and then grants a child permission to live one day before being brutally murdered. The lifetime of the child, i.e. 1 day, is circled in the red colour of the murderous blood.
To the left of the tombstone, the child is wrapped in the Muslim shroud. The tombstone reads the dates of birth and death. A life of 1 day, according to Zionist authorization.
This illustration is one of the most heartbreaking in the exhibition. The legless girl doesn’t turn around. She does not show us her face.
The text reads as follows:
“In Gaza, 7 girls had their legs amputated without anaesthesia…”
The colon after the yellow phrase indicates that the story is not over. The girls are still alive. Their suffering is unimaginable. But at the same time, their missing legs undergo a metamorphosis. They become the symbol of the future of peace in the homeland of Palestine, because they are as green as olive branches. The girl’s dress is as red as blood, but her legs are as green as hope. And the white colour of purity is the colour of the stitches of the dress and of the collar.
The last image that I would like to show in this article represents a child sitting in a meditative position. On the left is the symbol of childhood, the teddy bear. The head of the teddy looks up. On the right is the watermelon.
The message is twofold: on the one hand, the girl shows us resistance against the occupation. Rebellion to silence is the expression of resistance. And on the other hand, the little girl is aware that she is only a weak child who cannot stop Zionism. But the little girl believes in paradise symbolized by flying birds.
How long should we talk about Palestine?
How much longer, as journalists, should we stand up for Palestine and write against bloody Zionism?
The answer can be seen in this image:
“Don’t stop talking about Palestine until it is free.”
Thank you all for your voice in favour of Palestine!
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