Two activists from the British civil resistance group Youth Demand were arrested after staging a protest at the National Gallery in London, where they pasted a photo of a mother and child from Gaza over Pablo Picasso’s painting ‘Motherhood‘ to protest UK arms sales to Israel.
The demonstrators, identified as 23-year-old NHS worker Jai Halai and 21-year-old Politics and International Relations student Monday-Malachi Rosenfeld, carried out the protest on October 9.They placed the photo, taken by Palestinian journalist Ali Jadallah at Al-Shifa Hospital, over Picasso’s 1901 painting, and poured red paint onto the gallery floor. Security quickly detained the pair, and the artwork, protected by glass, was undamaged.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Youth Demand explained the protest: “Our government is arming Israel to carry out a genocide against Palestinians and killing without restrain in Lebanon. It cannot be all carrots and no sticks: a two-way arms embargo is the least Britain can do to stop displacement, destruction and death.”
Halai, in a recorded video, said she was forced to act because of the devastation faced by healthcare workers in conflict zones. “It’s been over one year of seeing my colleagues in the healthcare field decimated…by bombs, by bullets and by having to operate, with no medical equipment, on starved children. We need a two-way arms embargo on Israel now,” she said, as quoted by the Independent.
Rosenfeld, who is Jewish, said his motivation was to protest what he described as a genocide in Gaza. “I want the world to know this isn’t in the Jewish name and I want to see a free Palestine,” he said. “When Keir Starmer says Britain stands with Israel he’s wrong. We know very well that this is a genocide, not ‘self-defence’, and we, as the people of Britain, say enough is enough.”
The protest follows a high-profile 2022 incident at the gallery, when Just Stop Oil activists poured soup over Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’. This latest demonstration comes as tensions rise, with the UK recently suspending some arms export licences to Israel amid concerns over breaches of international law.