Exhibition of Phil Buehler’s Wall of Tears

The Wall of Tears is a powerful 15 metre by 3 metre hanging which contains the names of the 18,457 children killed in Gaza from October 2023 to July 2025. Created by American artist Phil Buehler, the Wall is in Australia thanks to the Perth Doctors Medical Aid for Palestine group, bringing the names and stories of children who have died to public attention.

At Easter in 2025, Rev Charissa Suli, National President of the Uniting Church wrote:
“With humility and repentance, we confess that our voice has not been clear or courageous in naming the immense and disproportionate suffering of Palestine. We lament our silences and hesitation. We know we cannot claim peace as our prayer if we have not named the injustices we see.

For more than seven decades, Palestinians have lived under the weight of occupation. On 7 October 2023, a horrific attack by Hamas militants in Israel claimed over 1,100 lives and saw 250 people taken hostage. Following this terrible violence, Israel unleashed a ferocious retaliation…. (And) the Palestinian people have endured merciless bombardment. Homes, hospitals, sacred places of worship, and centres of learning lie in ruins. Nearly two million Palestinians have been forcibly displaced. Medical workers, journalists, and humanitarian servants have been targeted and killed. Human rights abuses occur daily.

(Over 70,000) Palestinian lives – many of them women and children – have been stolen with unspeakable cruelty. For those who live, there is nowhere safe to go. We believe unequivocally that this desecration of human life is an outrage, a grievous wound in the heart of God.

To remain silent about the disproportionate suffering and long-standing oppression faced by Palestinians would be to deny the truth of what we see, and can never give us a just peace.”

The exhibition is sponsored by Amnesty, Palestinian Christians in Australia and Pitt Street Uniting Church.
Speakers at the launch will include Chris Sidoti, former Australian Human Rights Commissioner and member of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory founded by the UN, Dr Saira Hussain, who has done four medical missions to Gaza and Suzan Wahhab, the President of Palestinian Christians in Australia. Sydney Friends of Standing Together and the Muslim Collective are also participating in the launch and exhibition.