Israel Matzav

This is 'art'?

Believe it or not, there are Israelis who still don't get it. Unfortunately, many of them are members of our mainstream media.

An 'art exhibit' that featured female 'Palestinian' suicide bombers dressed as Medieval portraits of the Virgin Marry and holding Baby Jesus (see sample picture at top left) was quickly taken down on Thursday after relatives of terror victims arrived to protest. The exhibit was originally put up at Sokolov House in Tel Aviv, the headquarters of Israel's press association. Why it never occurred to the members of that 'august' body that someone might be offended by such an exhibit in Israel is simply beyond me. And the 'artists' who prepared this travesty and continued to defend it - two women named Galina Bleich and Lilia Check - are simply beneath contempt.

Sokolov House agreed to take the portraits down on Thursday afternoon, but another section of the exhibit - sand and dirt that had been taken from the scenes of the bombings and spread out across canvas - remained on the gallery's walls.

The artists defended their work on Thursday, but the victims' families expressed outrage over both the content of the exhibition and the fact that Sokolov House, the headquarters of the Israeli Journalists Association, had agreed to show it.

Dalit Levy, whose 17-year-old stepdaughter Rachel was killed in a suicide bombing as she shopped at the Supersol supermarket in Jerusalem's Kiryat Hayovel neighborhood on March 29, 2002, along with the store's security guard, Haim Smadar, 55, arrived outside Sokolov House on Thursday afternoon with an Israeli flag draped over her shoulders, and placed plastic sheeting on the sidewalk.

"You want art?" she asked a group of reporters who had gathered around her. "Here's art!" she said, before spilling a can of red paint next to a photograph of her stepdaughter and two memorial candles. "This is the blood of our children!"

Almagor, the terror victims' association, has warned the 'artists' not to show the 'works' elsewhere.

"We've been in contact with the artists, and made it clear that we want them to add information to the material so that people will understand that this is not promoting terrorism, but against it," he said.

"But at this point it's unclear if they are willing to agree to that. As it stands, if they continue to show the work the way it is now, we will obviously continue our struggle against it."

JPost omitted the artists' response, which I found here. I can't decide whether they're just dense or acting dumb.

Galina Bleich, one of the artists, was unapologetic. "I don't understand how this turned into an insult to bereaved families. We came actually to emphasize the exact opposite. The baby in Madonna's hands is in danger. This really needs to disturb people. It's not just an Israeli problem but a global one," she told the newspaper.

By each picture a small card explains what each suicide bomber did and how many Israeli victims her attack claimed:

One caption read:

"29 march 2002: An 18 yr old woman from Bethlehem. Engaged to a terrorist, presumed pregnant. By blowing herself up she murdered 2 and injured 28 at the supermarket in Kiryat Yovel in Jerusalem."

That's the description of Dorit Levy's daughter's murderer.

Why are the pictures offensive? Even ABC seems to get it.

Across the divide in Palestinian circles the bombers are often depicted as tragic martyrs driven to their desperate actions by forces beyond their control.

If Ms. Bleich and Ms. Check had created a picture of Mohamed Atta nailed to the cross, and put 9/11 statistics on the card showing it, would Americans have been offended? You bet. And you can bet that they wouldn't have dared to do that to Americans.

So why do they feel free to do it to Israelis? And why is our mainstream media so callous as to allow this sort of exhibit in their headquarters?

We have a national sickness.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:47 AM