Tattoos help Israelis scarred by attacks and war
A group of Israelis who were physically and mentally scarred in shootings, suicide bombings and military operations were given free tattoos this week by artists who hope body art can help their recovery.
The Healing Ink project brought artists from Israel, Europe and the United States to Jerusalem for the event, which took place at the city’s Israel Museum.
The 11 people receiving tattoos on Monday included a military veteran wounded by an antitank missile on a battlefield and a woman caught in a bomb at a Tel Aviv nightspot.
“It makes me feel like I got something that I chose to put on myself, unlike my injury, which I didn’t choose to get,” said Ben Baker Morag, who was wounded while serving in the army.
“This gives me a very good feeling,” he said of his tattoo, a lion on his left shoulder.
Others being tattooed at the event chose designs of a medieval knight in armor, the Beatles lyric “All you need is love,” and three monster heads eating one another.
For the artists involved, the experience of working with the wounded is a meaningful one.
“I am not a doctor, I cannot heal people,” said Wassim Razzouk, an Arab tattoo artist from Jerusalem’s Old City. “But with my ink and with my art if that could help heal people, for me that is something so great.” (Reuters) MULI STEIN, who suffers from memories of what he saw as an ambulance driver at an IDF base, gets a tattoo done by American artist Jesse Smith, as part of the Healing Ink project, at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem on Monday.