Wall of Tears: 50-foot-tall mural in Brooklyn pays tribute to children killed in Gaza | art

The first is Wissam Iyad Muhammad Abu Stimfs, or Wissam Iyad Muhammad Abu Fusefa, a 14-year-old boy. The last is Sabah Omar Saad Al-Masry, or Sabah Omar Saad Al-Masry, an eight-year-old girl.

These two children’s names mark the beginning and end of the “Wall of Tears,” a massive artwork honoring the 18,457 children killed in Gaza between October 7, 2023 and July 19, 2025. It opened next to the Pine Box Rock Shop bar at 12 Grattan Street in Brooklyn, New York, on Thursday.

The mural, made of waterproof and UV-resistant vinyl, is 50 feet long and 10 feet high, lists children killed in Gaza in the order in which they died, based on data from the Gaza Ministry of Health. This will include photographs and stories of individual children, drawing on reports from The Guardian and The Washington Post.

“If you get up close, it looks almost like an abstract painting which draws people in to see it. What is that?” Buehler, 69, says over the phone. “Then you will see the names of the children who have been killed in Gaza since October 7, and there are thousands of them lying in the area.

“And then you’re drawn more, I hope, to see the faces, and to read the stories of some of the few dozen that I have scattered all over the fence. That’s the part that grabs my attention when I look at it. You see these faces full of joy and hope, snapshots of graduations and birthday parties and family gatherings and knowing that these kids’ lives have just ended.”

“You can’t not think about your children and your families,” says the artist. “I hope this will get people thinking about how they can help, even if it’s just taking a photo of the mural and passing it on social media to their friends and family because hearing something from someone you know is important.”

Buehler has previously designed massive murals, including the Wall of Lies, displaying more than 20,000 lies told by Donald Trump during his first term as president; the “Wall of Liars and Deniers,” which includes 381 Republican election deniers running in the 2022 midterm elections; Wall of Shame, chronicling the actions of more than 1,500 rioters on January 6; and Empty Beds, which highlights Russia’s kidnapping of nearly 20,000 Ukrainian children.

He was working on the Wall of Tears with his usual collaborator, the nonprofit Brooklyn Radio. The project was essentially out of date before it opened: it only records deaths up to last July because that was the last update to the Gaza health authorities’ database; Hundreds more children have been killed since then, even after the ceasefire in October.

“This is probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever worked on emotionally,” Buehler says. “I always think of that quote attributed to Stalin, which is that one death is a tragedy, and a million deaths is a statistic. People can sympathize with the suffering of one person but then ignore or be overshadowed by thousands, and the devastation and death in Gaza is one of those stories.

“I hope that through this piece, ‘Wall of Tears,’ you can understand the magnitude of the deaths of these 18,457 children by seeing their names stretched 50 feet down the street and empathizing with their surviving families.”

Despite the harsh weather, Buehler opened the facility on Thursday to coincide with the second anniversary of the death of Hind Rajab, a five-year-old girl who was left bleeding among the bodies of six family members after an Israeli tank targeted their car, leaving it with 335 bullet holes, according to the Forensic Architecture Research Group.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society released audio recordings of Hind’s last hours, documenting the repeated and urgent requests for rescue and contact, which led to her growing feelings of sadness, assuring her that help was on the way. This realistic voice can be heard in The Voice of Hind Ragab, a Tunisian film by Kaouther Ben Hania that was nominated for an Academy Award in the International Feature Film category.

“The film is incredibly moving and deserves an Oscar because it is a re-enactment of the call, where the Red Crescent receives the call, but the voice is hers,” Buhler says. She’s on the phone. She’s five and she’s begging, come and get me. “This innocent five-year-old child has become a picture of the tragedy there.”

The war in Gaza caused disagreements in New York, which has the largest Jewish population outside Israel, with about a million Jews. Efforts to brand Zahran Mamdani, a champion of Palestinian rights, as an anti-Semite, failed after he won election to become New York City’s first Muslim mayor.

Buhler rejects the idea that opposition to war is tantamount to anti-Semitism. “Confusing those two things makes it more difficult to talk about,” he says. “You can’t have this conversation at all. I’m a little worried about that with this piece.”

“I’ve talked to a lot of Palestinian and Jewish friends. Most of my Jewish friends are liberal Jews and their response is, ‘It’s a tragedy, their hearts break for these children and these families, but they’re afraid that drawing attention to this will come back as anti-Semitism.’

“So the Jews are afraid to draw attention to it, and the Palestinians are afraid to draw attention to it because it boomers back against them. This moment in time in our culture and our world is not appropriate for open dialogue. It is too divided, too tribal. ‘If you are against the killing of children in Gaza, you must be against the Jews.’ That is not true.“