Eating Bullets--A West Bank Artist Turns Weapons into Food for Thought

A case from a 1948 British Mandate shell used on the Palestinian
population in 1948 which has been turned into a flower.

One of the afternoons we were in Ramallah, our group happened upon an art exhibit by a local Palestinian artist who had done a rather daring thing: he's been collecting  Israeli weapons that have been used against the local Palestinian population in the West Bank (his home town is Bilin) over the past four decades of the occupation and has amassed a critical cache of the stuff.  But Ibrahim  (I wont disclose his full name) doesn't have any intention of using the weapons for harming people or property. He's an artist with a mission. He's making art pieces/installations with the thousands of Israeli (and most of them manufactured in the USA) weapons he has found on the ground in a number of West Bank towns and villages that have been particularly hard-hit since the First and Second Intifada (1987-2003). The art exhibit was a powerful reminder of how much U.S.-made and Israeli-deployed weapons are a part of the daily lives of Palestinians. One of the exhibits below I saw was a food display basket (such as you see in a bakery or produce market) filled with tear gas bombs, deafening bombs, etc. This is no joke. Palestinians are fed a regular diet of death, destruction and weapons, particularly when they protest the repressive conditions under which they live. Ibrahim is from Bilin, a village that has been particularly, as well as harshly, affected by the occupation. This village has experienced some of the most dramatic deployment of Israeli shells, grenades, tear gas because of the regular protests against the building of the Israeli Separation Wall and the Bilin Village land that was taken in order to build it.

Palestine ensconced in shells. 

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The artist Ibrahim, speaking about his work. Notice the deep
indent in his forehead--an injury sustained by an IDF soldier shooting a tear gas cannister at him at very short range (less than 15 ft.)

Ibrahim's goal is to collect the weapons, shells, grenade pins, and casings and show just how much a regular diet of weapons Palestinian people are forced to cosume at the hands of the Israeli occupation. He is also a journalist and as such is keeping a log of the numbers of weapons deployed against civilians who protest the conditions of occupation. He told those of us who asked questions that he has been injured 83 times in both in the process of protesting the demolition of homes, land confiscations, and in the process of actually collecting these weapons; some at the hands of Israeli IDF soldiers shooting at him, and other times, as a consequence of collecting the weaponry off the ground. He has been accused of "terrorism" for collecting these weapons, even though he also stated that he does not ever intend to use them except to make his art. 


Ibrahim is a young, intense young man. It's not hard to notice the deep indent in his forehead where an Israeli shot a tear gas canister at close range. Although the weapon caused damage, he was lucky. Unlike the American activist, Tristan Anderson, who was shot by a tear gas cannister at close range in the town of Nilin, West Bank, where he was part of an international solidarity delegation in 2009 and was severely injured and sustained long-term head injuries. He's from Oakland, and as far as I know his case is still pending in Israeli court (nearly two years later) and he's severely impaired. 

'Ibrahim's artwork is very moving--and it's intended to shock you because it's really about the devastating reality of Palestinian life--that culture, art, all the things we take for granted, are rendered nearly impossible by the violence and militarization of the occupation. Palestinians are shot at, bombed, have their houses demolished, are arrested, beaten, and when they try to protest, are subjected to bombs that smoke, smell, deafen, and make a person cry. They are weapons intended to do the same thing the wall does---to render Palestinian civil society--including the act of resistance and protest--impossible if not difficult. There are weekly protests all over the West Bank to protest checkpoints, land confiscations, settler roads, settlements, and road blocks, and the wall and each protest is routinely and regularly met with Israeli IDF soldiers bearing weapons (almost all are made in the USA). This is a man who is trying to make art from the resources of occupation. He has been accused by the Israeli of being a "terrorist" because he has a large collection of these spent weapons, but he states unequivocally that he is an artist and journalist and his real mission is to document the different kinds of deadly weapons that are used against the Palestinians under occupation and to categorize, quantify, and understand the effects of these weapons on his community. He is hoping to collect enough Israeli weapons to build a Statue of Liberty made from them. It isn't hard to see why people have a hard time with the U.S. here in the West Bank of Palestine;  most of this--this ugly, violent, highly militarized 63-year occupation is financed and armed by the U.S. --- so when Palestinians see U.S. Congressman leaping up from their chairs to give Netanyahu a standing ovation--think about what it means for the people of Palestine who are eating our bullets. One woman put it to me this way, "This Occupation has arrested our lives." 

Here are some pieces in the show we saw: