Gaza’s famous ‘onion kid’ depicted in student mural in Colonization Resistance Week

Protesting the Israeli occupation, students painted a mural of a nine-year-old Gazan boy who tried to alleviate the effects of Israeli tear gas by wearing a makeshift gas mask − made up of a construction worker’s dust mask with a scallion inside − on the university’s campus on Tuesday, March 26, 2019.

The activity is part of the 2019 Colonization Resistance Week, organized by the Right to Education Campaign at Birzeit University from March 25 to 28, which also includes symposia, public lectures, group book readings, and film screenings that highlight how the occupation impacts every aspect of Palestinian life. 

Alongside the mural, a week-long exhibition featuring photographs of the “Great March of Return” − the weekly protests against the Israeli occupation held in Gaza since March 2018 − is presented in the lobby of the Faculty of Engineering and Technology. The mural’s subject, the onion-masked boy, was one of the thousands of Palestinians who have taken part in the border protests.