Baha Boukhari, Palestinian cartoonist, Died at 71

  Artists

Baha Boukhari was born in 1944, in Jerusalem and died on November 1, 2015.

He was a Palestinian cartoonist.

Before his death, Baha Boukhari worked in Ramallah, in the West Bank for the Palestinian daily, Al-Ayyam.

Baha once said that it “was a strange coincident to have his very first picture as an infant in caricature drawn by a friend of his father’s instead of as a photograph.”

He started his career as a political cartoonist in Kuwait in 1964 where he published his cartoons until 1988 in two Kuwaiti newspapers Al Rai Al A’am and Al Anba’a.

Baha was a founding member of Cartooning For Peace in 2006.

He eventually became a central figure in Palestine’s ever changing love/hate affair with free speech,” CRNI’s Director Bro Russell remembers.

Baha migrated to live in Syria and Tunisia for several years before his return to Palestine in 1994.

His characters could describe as the ordinary Palestinian and, although his cartoons address complex issues for many Palestinians, he hopes that his sense of humour and sarcasm causes people to smile.

In 2008, a Hamas-run court ordered Al-Ayyam banned from the Gaza Strip because of a Boukhari cartoon mocking Hamas parliamentarians.

His political cartoons, has illustrated several children’s books and magazines and has created a number of drawings that deal with human and women’s rights issues.

Baha was affiliated with; the General University of Palestinian Writers & Journalists, Federation of Arab Journalists, General Union of Palestinian Artists and the Arab Cartoonists Association.

Baha Boukhar passed away at 71 yrs old.