Ari Bussel
We sit at a Jewish or Arab film festival, or at a "pro-Israel, pro-peace" or "free Palestine, end the Occupation" event and watch a full feature film about the Occupation Army, the 21st Century manifestation of Nazis (i.e. Israelis). They are building a wall around Palestinians towns, uprooting their olive tree groves, purposely detaining them and denying them movement, treating them as sub-humans while catching their young males to harvest their organs.
A future screening will be of a film titled "Picasso coming to Palestine."
For a Westerner living in a democracy, going to a museum or an art show or other cultural event is part of our lives. Some of us would aspire to visit a major museum in one of the world’s capitals or to have a chance to experience a particular once-in-a-lifetime performance. I remember seeing Jascha Heifetz at UCLA, when I was a student there, and missing one of the very last performances by Yul Brynner because I was a stubborn adolescent and refused to go with the family. Thus, we can easily relate when we hear of a very famous painting being loaned to a local exhibit for a short period of time. Many foundations in the USA loan their collections so the public at large will have access, like the modern art collection of the Frederick Weisman Art Foundation.
Something in a Picasso on loan to Palestinian Authority is so extraordinary that it captured the imagination of a filmmaker and will soon capture our hearts. It is so vile that we must quash the very image while still in its infancy, before I have to sit alongside well-intentioned audiences and deceitful enemies of Israel and the West and suffer through yet another screening that has one aim, and one only: demonize the Jews, delegitimize the Jewish State.
It is in this movie that we will see the craving of the innocent, subjugated Palestinians to have a sense of normalcy, art, culture and some color in their lives.
We will be reminded vividly of a single butterfly in the Ghetto or the child in a red dress against the black and white background in Spielberg's movie Schindler’s List.
It is the Journey of Picasso that will show us how evil the Israelis are. Oh, how easily we will ignore the incitement for terrorism throughout every fiber of the Palestinian existence and turn the most vicious and hideous terrorists into peace-loving angels or Michelangelo’s David.
Mistake not, “Palestinians” are no David. They are the Goliath that wants to destroy Israel and who is using our very system, ideals, morals, history and institutions to fight our modern-day, Western existence.
Rather than bringing a Picasso, possibly it would be more helpful to stop teaching children to hate an Israeli or Jew just because they are Jewish?
Maybe in the quest to inspire peace, it would make more sense to stop promoting the propaganda that every square inch of Israel is an occupied land stolen from the Palestinians?
Peace will arrive neither with Picasso nor with aspirations to annihilate Israel. The mere presence of the painting does not make savages into cultured people or a beast into a beauty.
Last week, the Civil Administration coordinated the return shipment of Pablo Picasso’s famous oil painting “Buste de Femme” (1943) from Ramallah to the Van Abbemuseum in the Netherlands.
From June 24th to July 21st, the International Academy of Art Palestine (IAAP) in Ramallah exhibited the $4.3 million painting, allowing Palestinians to experience the most valuable work of modern art to have ever been exhibited in the West Bank. [Priceless art, historical and archeological sites are available throughout Judea and Samaria, practically for free.] As part of a larger project, IAAP documented its experience in requesting, transferring, exhibiting and returning the famous work of art.
In a press announcement by the Israel Defense Forces, the Civil Administration said it “was pleased to contribute to this endeavor and will continue to assist in all future artistic and cultural efforts.”
When will Israel stop facilitating her own downfall? Anyone who imagines two states living side-by-side with good neighborly relations would have expected nothing less than a traveling exhibit. As an example, I was promoting a Jordanian movie, Captain Abu Raed. However, Israelis (Jews) are not invited, in fact not permitted and realistically may be murdered if they find themselves in PA-controlled areas.
The Palestinians do not welcome Jews in their midst. Jews (aka Israelis) are unwelcome guests, filth prohibited from defiling the holy Palestinian land.
The Palestinians aspire to have a state of their own and to eliminate their Israeli neighbors. There is no space in the Middle East for a Jewish State or for Jews. The first is a racist idea, the latter an abomination of the good order of the world according to the Quran.
Even from a mere practical approach, they want their own “free and independent Palestine” while millions of their brethren will be able, by law (i.e. a peace agreement by which Israel capitulates to their demands), to immigrate to the Jewish State. Then the notion of Apartheid and Racism will indeed apply, and Israel will have to be erased, once and for all; a blight removed for all eternity from this earth.
So what are Israeli authorities doing? They facilitate normal life and assist the very propaganda machine against Israel. I can only envision the movie about a cultural icon like a Picasso painting being shipped to Ramallah. All the obstacles along the way, juxtaposed for the convenience of the viewer. Road Blocks. Zionist-Nazi-like Soldiers. Ghettos. Walls. Vicious dogs patrolling the open air prison. Chimneys spewing ashes into the air 24 hours a day, black during the day, fire during the night. And a sign (instead of “work is liberating”) reading “Zionist Propaganda: Israel permits a painting for a short visitation.”
How characteristic that the colors of the chosen Picasso’s painting match so very closely those of the Nazi Concentration Camps.
Has no one in Israel sat in or possibly read a report about an event in any major city around the world where such acts of kindness are twisted and presented as the most sophisticated cover-up of the Zionist-Colonialist-Imperialist-Occupier evil deeds?
Imagine a chessboard. There are two armies ready to battle, one white and the other black. One prepared to fight in spirit and in body. The other engaged in a pleasant afternoon high tea dressed in pink.
Picasso, my friends, was used to fight Israel, and Israel is plowing the path to her own demise. Apparently, we once marched like sheep to the slaughter and nothing has changed. Israel will also dig the trench in which she will later be shot and thrown into, but for now she is oblivious. So used is she to insanity and so deeply she craves normalcy, that she refuses to see the obvious and deliberately ignores what is unfolding in front of her very eyes.
Once shot, as the last whisper or silent shout escapes her lips, it will be too late. She will ascend to heaven with an image of Picasso’s painting, reminiscent of Chagall’s goat.
If anything, the gates of Heaven will remain locked, for stupidity must not be excused, not even for God’s Chosen People.
The Director of the International Art Academy in Ramallah, Khaled Hourani, first saw the painting in 2008. The project was more than two years in the making. Hourani says: “This started off as a crazy idea to bring a European masterpiece to a war-zone, but I was only half-joking.”
The Palestinians define the area correctly as a WAR ZONE. What will it take for Israel to recognize the same and behave accordingly?
Until such time, Israel continues to engage in the frivolities of high tea all day long while her enemies have amassed the most magnificent arsenal of conventional and other methods of destruction.
See how efficient their propaganda machine, constantly reaching new heights. Charles Esche, Van Abbemuseum’s director said: “Our Picasso will be changed by its journey to Ramallah. It will take on extra meaning and the story will remain a part of the history of the painting from this moment on.”
Only in the land of a thousand and one Arabian nights can one be so creative as to turn good into evil and make evil seem so innocent.
May Israelis be spared a prolonged destruction, may they suffer little when the day comes. May we all.
The series “Postcards from America—Postcards from Israel” by Ari Bussel and Norma Zager is a compilation of articles capturing the essence of life in America and Israel during the first two decades of the 21st Century.
The writers invite readers to view and experience an Israel and her politics through their eyes, Israel visitors rarely discover.
This point—and often—counter-point presentation is sprinkled with humor and sadness and attempts to tackle serious and relevant issues of the day. The series began in 2008, appears both in print in the USA and on numerous websites and is followed regularly by readership from around the world.
© “Postcards from America — Postcards from Israel,” July, 2011
Contact: bussel@me.com
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