On 30 June 2016, an image of Hallel Yaffa Ariel’s bloodstained bedroom emerged on British photographer Jennie Milne’s social media feed. A Palestinian terrorist had stabbed the 13-year-old Israeli girl to death in her bed.
Ms Milne was so horrified she tracked down the murdered teenager’s parents, Rina and Amichai Ariel, in Kiryat Arba on the outskirts of Hebron, and wrote them a letter saying she was grieving with them.
1a. Jennie Milne DYKMN 2020
Photographer Jennie Milne
But her words felt inadequate. Ms Milne was haunted, and could not unsee what she had seen. She wanted to stand with Hallel’s family in a more public way.
Two years later, and still unable to shake off what she had seen, the photographer did just that. She flew to Israel where she met and took photographs of the Ariels, and the relatives and friends of eight other Israelis who have been murdered in terrorist attacks in the Jewish state.
Board 8 Chava Shatsky
Chava Shatsky
The result is the photography exhibition Do You Know My Name? which was displayed at Wimbledon Synagogue, in south-west London, earlier this month and which is also published as a book.
“After I contacted Rina and Amichai, I started digging around and soon discovered that Hallel’s murder was far from an isolated incident, that there is no shortage of terror victims in Israel, but very little reporting of their deaths outside the country,” says Ms Milne, who is a photography lecturer at Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen.
“There is this narrative that almost justifies the murder of Jews in Israel, which implies it’s somehow the country’s fault.
These photographs are my attempt at a counter-narrative.”
Among the people she photographed is Hendon-born Steve Bloomberg who made aliyah in 1982 and whose life was torn apart when terrorists opened fire on his car in 2001, killing his pregnant wife Tehiya and paralysing him and his daughter Tzipi, then 16, from the waist down. In addition to the more than 3,000 people who have died in terrorist attacks on Israeli soil since 1948, a further 25,000 people have been wounded and maimed.
Board 1 Kay Wilson (alternative)
Kay Wilson
“When he was waiting for the ambulance, Steve says he knew his wife had passed away, and his thoughts were, ‘If she isn’t with us, I have to survive so I can look after our five children’,” says Ms Milne.
“But he has done more than simply survive. He has rebuilt his life, becoming an advocate for disabled people, and Tzipi is an accomplished sportswoman who competes in international skiing competitions.”
There is also a portrait of British-born Kay Wilson, who was left for dead after a savage machete attack in the Jerusalem Forest in 2010 in which her friend Kristine Luken died.
The friends were tied up, gagged and repeatedly stabbed by two Palestinians who later said that they had gone to the forest to kill Jews.
“I watched my friend chopped up before my eyes, and only survived because I played dead, despite being stabbed 13 times and having more than 30 bones broken by the force of the blows I received,” she said at the time of the attack. “Each time he plunged his machete into me, I could hear my bones crunch and my flesh ripping from the serrated blade.”
Ms Wilson has spoken in public about the attack many times — “to bring goodness to Kristine’s memory and to testify to the goodness of Israel” — and now works with Arab friends teaching Palestinian children music and English in refugee camps in the West Bank.
“She is one of bravest people I have ever met,” says Ms Milne, “and I want to bring her story to light, to tell people that when we say ‘never again’ it includes Jews living in Israel.”
“That photograph of Hallel’s bedroom came up on my social media feed shortly after I had uncovered devastating information about members of my mother’s family who had perished in the Holocaust. They were murdered for the same reason: for being Jewish.”
blurb.co.uk/b/9633658-do-you-know-my-name
