Do we need a weeping girl icon to remind us of the atrocities happening everyday?

June is absolutely the best time I like to be in Singapore, Singapore Art's Festival and the Great Singapore Sale. And also its the school holidays so all the shopping centres will feature some "take photo with winnie the pooh/barney" sessions and my friends and I can stand there and laugh at the mascots.

I watched The Wall last Wednesday, something I have been looking forward to watching for some time. It was performed by the Al Kasaba Theatre and Cinematheque group from the Palestinian Territories, and uses folk songs and story telling techniques to convey the sense of entrapment and helplessness the Palestinians feel behind the wall. Although at some points the subtitles got lost and we were left totally clueless in Arabic, the simplistic narrative and childlike story telling was poignant and left a bittersweet aftertaste. Instead of dwelling on the politics, it focused on the human situation in Palestine. A man who hasn't seen his wife for 5 years and was repeatedly rejected when he tried to cross the wall to see her. The woman whose dress-making shop was repeatedly shut down by the Isreali authorities. The jockey who dreams of leaving Palestine with his animal but was thrown into jail. The numerous permits and checkpoints the Palestinians have to face when they want to get anywhere. With the recent haunting images of images of Huda Ghalia, the seven-year-old Palestinian girl who has been made the icon of Palestinian suffering after she lost her parents in a beach blast, this play was exceptionally symbolic to me.

Also because my last contact with the Middle-Eastern situation was at a Zionist talk at Upenn about the threat of Palestine to the Jewish nation through the proliferation of propaganda media. Admittedly I was there for the free pizza, but it left me wanting to know the other side of the situation. The tide and media favour has been in a stand still between the Palestinian and Israeli plight with the recent Qassam rocket attacks, the Gaza beach massacres and Hamas' refusal to renounce its call for Israel's destruction. Often as we get Middle-East conflict fatigue (because it is in the news everyday), it's easy to forget that no matter which side we want to take, there is a human live situation that we cannot ignore. No Palestinian or Israeli deserves to die. Or deserve to lose their family. And I think The Wall brought a fresh reminder of the human aspect in this conflict we so easily get all academic about.