The Art of Israel Demonisation

"My Sderot" by an 8-year-old
 resident, Lior Yehuda

Daphne Anson
10 April '11

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2011/04/art-of-israel-demonisation.html

Rod Cox's exhibition of children's drawings from Gaza, about which I blogged last year , has been up and down the UK, and continues to do the rounds of the Israel-hating circuit. A number of places of Christian worship and other venues that, frankly, should know better than to commit to a naked display of partisanship, often at public expense, have been its hosts.

There it is below when at the Public Library at Reading, which has a Palestine Solidarity Campaign branch that links to antisemitic material on its website.

The written introduction to this YouTube video, which has been put on by a man called Alex Seymour, who has also taken videos of such events as the Ahava shop boycott in London's Covent Garden, contains this bald assertion:

"Thanks to the IDF, Gaza, to the eternal shame of the Jewish People, will go down in history with such names as Guernica, Warsaw, Coventry and Dresden."

The "Jewish People," eh? Well,at least there's no attempt to disguise the author's judeophobia with camouflage talk of "Zionists".

But before we get to the video, the BBC has been dabbling in art to the intended detriment of Israel. Al Beeb, of course, is ever-ready to aid and abet the narrative of Palestinian victimisation while downplaying or even ignoring Arab outrages against Jews, be the victims infants butchered in their own beds or schoolboys on buses. Just look at the following lachrymose feature by Bowen's apprentice Jon Donnison as a case in point:

'"Why is Palestinian blood cheaper than Israeli blood?" asks Wael Abu Awema, a 40-year-old father of five.


There have been Israeli attacks on Gaza every day this week. At least 10 Palestinians have been killed, including at least four civilians, two of them children. More than 30 Palestinians have been injured.


"Of course we are worried. My kids are wetting themselves at night when they hear the Israeli air strikes," says Mr Abu Awema.


His eyes are bloodshot and red, as if he also might be losing sleep.... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12854225

As is usual with BBC reports, the Palestinian viewpoint takes precedence over the Israeli one, which brings up the rear in almost token fashion. Al Beeb rarely bothers to report the heartache of Israelis, let alone in an indulgent manner, and the feelings of parents and children in Sderot - "the bomb shelter capital of the world" - as they await the latest pounding by rockets from Hamastan are seldom brought to the public's attention.
See: http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/6851040/the-bbc-maintains-its-impeccable-evenhandedness-between-murderer-and-victim.thtml

Not long ago the BBC had an outrageously propagandistic anti-Israel piece by reporter Anna Macnamee about photographs from Gaza by Kai Wiedenhofer, in which she cunningly cited the Goldstone Report as well as letting Wiedenhofer, who is by all accounts (but not hers) a veteran anti-Zionist,casually dismiss the perception that he's antisemitic.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-12398823 and see also http://www.robinshepherdonline.com/bbc-highlights-exhibition-of-israeli-war-crimes-in-gaza-by-german-photographer-who-uses-nazi-analogies-with-israel/

The BBC's latest bout of artfulness comes via a slideshow of paintings on its News website by young Palestinian artists. The paintings shown are on display in London courtesy of the Arab A.M.Qattan Foundation, and while none of those selected for display appears to be of an overt anti-Israel nature, and while I don't begrudge the fact that these artists have a showcase, the fact that Al Beeb has chosen to highlight them (when it fails as a matter of course to highlight art from other parts of the globe or other ethnicities) speaks volumes, I feel. Anything Palestinian elicits a favourable Pavlovian response.

Anyway, here at last is that Alex Seymour video I mentioned above:



Remember, the children of Sderot have also made paintings and drawings reflecting their experiences (I've included one, above). But you have to go to the Israeli Foreign Ministery website to see them. http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/MFAArchive/2000_2009/2007/Drawings%20by%20children%20of%20Sderot%2021-May-2007

For, in contrast to the drawings from Gaza, there are no Western lefties just aching to bring them to a venue near you.

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