At War With Art 

"This is not an exhibition that is very candid, you know, reflecting the freedom fighters or the Palestinian narrative."
"It's something that hides here a message that is very difficult for me, as Israeli ambassador, to accept. It's a message that is glorifying terrorism."
Rafael Barak, Israeli ambassador to Canada

A detail of Rehab Nazzal's wall-sized mosaic of Palestinian prisoners, in her exhibition Invisible at Karsh-Masson Gallery in Ottawa city hall. (Photo Ottawa Citizen)

The Palestinian General Delegation in Ottawa, on the other hand, "condemns Israel's assault on Canadian free speech". However, the delegation is also "unsurprised" the ambassador would "stoop to the level of interfering in a local exhibit", which they feel people should flock to, and likely now will, more than a trifle intrigued by the spill-over of acrimony and political manoeuvring that the "art" exhibition has occasioned.

Within the general public almost anywhere in the world there is a heightened interest and sympathy for the portrayal of Palestinians as wronged people, refugees whose pitiable plight is the fault of Israel which insisted on declaring itself a state and a homeland for the proverbial wandering Jews from antiquity to the present, their ancient homeland presence destroyed.

That the Palestinians refused that 1948 opportunity proffered them through the auspices of the United Nations, through Partition, to pose as a nation of their own sovereign identity because they refused to share 'Palestine' with its original occupants, is a story that is not of too much interest to the international community. Nor is there much in the way of sympathy for Jews and Israel over the mounting of terror attacks by the PLO, attempting to destroy Israel anew.

From the plane and ship highjackings mounted by the PLO and its militant terrorist factions, to the international bombings and the murders of civilians and Jewish athletes, the atrocities committed by those viewing it as a signal honour to sacrifice themselves as martyrs in undertaking the deaths of as many Israel citizens as possible, the flick of a disinterested eyebrow merited little sympathy for Israel.

Not just because Israel demonstrated its capacity for self-defense, and that it would never again collectively countenance the Jew as the world's universal scapegoat culminating in the wholesale annihilation of most of European Jewry during the Holocaust of World War II, but also because the nation was seen as having the upper hand in its militant push-back.

The adaptability of Palestinians to use modern techniques of blaming and shaming and portraying themselves as perpetual refugees requiring a solution of their own to the presence of Jews, transcends cleverness in the use of the democratic West's values, twisting and turning them to advantage. So Canadian 'free speech', becomes a cudgel with which to thump someone who objects to the public lionization of suicide bombers.

Leading the Palestinian General Delegation to gloat with pleasure at the failed attempt of the Israeli ambassador to convince the mayor of Ottawa that the twisted view of political statements and obvious-enough manipulation of historical events, along with the inevitable slander so acceptable now to the liberal-left of society, has led to inaction on the part of the municipality, other than to state the opinions are not theirs, but those of the artist.

The "brave decision by City Hall to reject Israeli censorship and uphold Canada's free speech laws", pleases the delegation enormously. While the Israeli embassy listed seven people whose images appear in the exhibition as being those of "just a handful of the suicide bombers, masterminds or massacres, terrorist operatives and hijackers glorified in the exhibit", presenting itself as the priceless commentary of art.

Palestinian-Canadian artist Rehab Nazzal will have gained much to her reputation as a result of this contretemps. As the saying goes, any publicity can only garnish one's reputation. The embassy, she contends, cited her images out of their proper context; they represent a minuscule proportion of her countless images. "It's not about glorifying terror, definitely not", she insisted beyond ingenuous; those images have been presented merely because they form part of the Palestinian "collective memory".