Activists have pasted a photograph of a Palestinian mother and child over the protective glass of Pablo Picasso’s 1901 painting “Motherhood (La Maternité)” at the National Gallery in London, aiming to draw attention to the risks faced by families in Gaza.
The protesters, identified as Jai Halai, a 23-year-old NHS worker, and Monday-Malachi Rosenfeld, a 21-year-old politics student, entered Room 43 of the gallery just before noon. The pasted image, captured by Anadolu photojournalist Ali Jadallah, portrays a distressed and bloodied mother holding her injured child following an Israeli airstrike on Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital in 2023.
Speaking at the protest, Jai Halai explained: “I’m taking action with Youth Demand because I’ve spent over a year watching my colleagues in healthcare torn apart by bombs and bullets. We need a two-way arms embargo on Israel now; 87% of the British public supports this, but our government continues to arm Israel. Direct action is our duty as young people—to defend those without a voice and secure our future.”
Rosenfeld, a Jewish student at Greenwich University, expressed his moral obligation to speak out, saying: “As a Jew, I feel it’s my duty to call out the genocide being committed in Gaza. This is not being done in the Jewish name. When Keir Starmer says Britain stands with Israel, he’s wrong. We know very well this is not self-defense—this is genocide. The people of Britain say enough is enough.”
A spokesperson for Youth Demand said that our government is arming Israel to carry out a genocide against Palestinians and is complicit in the killings in Lebanon.
