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Land Day Monument

The Story of a Monument: Land's Day Sakhneen 1978-2006

Exhibition, Hagar Gallery

 Curator: Tal Ben-Zvi

The exhibition “Story of a Monument: Land Day Sakhneen 1976-2006” is centered on the Sakhneen monument commemorating Land Day, as a space of struggle, remembrance and identity of the Palestinian minority in Israel.

The first Land Day took place on 30.3.1976, in protest against the government’s decision to expropriate 20,000 acres in the Sakhneen area for “Galilee Judaization” purposes. The leaders of the Rakakh political party, together with the heads of the Arab municipalities in the Galilee region, called for a day of general strike and protest demonstrations on the 30th of March. The demonstrations took place mainly in the villages of Sakhneen, Arrabi and Deir-Hanna. IDF forces confronted the demonstration participants, resulting in six dead demonstrators and many wounded. The six people killed were: Khir Mohamed Yasin from Arabe, Raja Khasin Abu-Ria, Khader Abed Khlaila and Khadija Shuhana from Sakhneen, Mohamed Yusef Taha from Kana and Rafet Zuheiri from Nur-Shames, who was shot in Taibe.

In the course of the years following the Land Day events, Abed Abdi and Gershon Knispel decided to build a monument commemorating the Sakhneen Land Day, with support from the Sakhneen mayor at the time, Jamal Tarabeih. On the 30th of March 1977, exactly one year after the demonstrations, the artists presented a model of the monument to the Arab Municipalities Committee and to the wide public.

Land Day Monument Catalog

published by Abed Abdi and Gershon Knispel in 1976

Joshua Sobol:Creating a Joint Creation

What can be said today about the events of the “Land Day”, that bitter day of the 30th March, 1976. I take the liberty of reiterating what I wrote a month before the “Land Day”, and published in the weekly “Chotam” of 27th February, 1976....
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Gershon Knispel: The Answer (1976)

I have been asked again and again, why we made the monument to the “Land Day” at Sakhneen. In ancient times, people piled up cairns as monuments to preserve a site or to drive away evil spirits… And surely only evil spirits could force peasantry...
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Memorial of Monuments to the Present

The peoples of the world have created, on their creative path of civilization, expressions for their conceptions of thought, in the form of symbols and rituals which were clearly expressed by the erection of temples, places of worship, obelisques and stone monuments. In the wake...
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Samih Al-Qassim: Blood and Soil

From earth to earth! For hundreds of years, man has been repeating these words, which are full of equanimity and wisdom, and are within a religious, Sufi context. But for the peasant who is rooted in the soil of his land, this sentence is charged...
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Psotscript

by Gershon Knispel 2012

Gershon Knispel: We Were As Dreamers

Each of us summarized the completion of the monument in Sakhnin in his own way. I wrote: “With my friend and colleague Abed Abdi I erected this monument to ‘drive out the evil spirit’ and leave traces… of the acts of wrongdoing, robbery, murder and dispossession for the future generations that found it hard to...
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Land Day Catalog- IMAGES

published by Abed Abdi and Gershon Knispel in 1976

Land Day Posters

Illustrated by Abed Abdi

Land Day Monument Photo Archive

photography by Gideon Gitai on 30.3. 1978

Related Video Clips

Exhibition Opening

The Story of A Monument

Gershon Knispel

4 months before his death

Exhibition Opening

The Story of A Monument

Land Day Monument Today

phoography by Tal Ben Zvi

Haaretz | Opinion

Why Land Day Still Matters

Sam Bahour and Fida Jiryis

2012

Arabic Resources

Land Day Monument

الارشيف الرقمي الرسمي

النصب التذكاري لشهداء يوم الارض

Hebrew Resources

Land Day Monument

Land Day

on Wikipedia

Land Day March 30, is a day of commemoration for Arab citizens of Israel and Palestinians of the events of that date in 1976 in Israel.

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