FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

By Vic Rosenthal

The Oakland, California Museum of Children’s Art (MOCHA) has become a focus of controversy after the cancellation of a scheduled exhibition of art supposedly by ‘Palestinian children’ from Gaza, aged 9-11.

The pictures are emotionally powerful, showing the victimization of civilians, especially children, by demonic Israeli soldiers. They include scenes of horror, fear and death as well as Palestinian and Jewish political symbols. Note the Israeli flag on the soldier, as well as the Palestinian flag, the map showing Israel as ‘Palestine’ and what appears to be the Hizballah logo above it in the illustration above.

The exhibit was cancelled after community residents protested that the images were not suitable for children — the museum’s intended audience — and that the one-sided, highly political content was inappropriate.

It is an example of two characteristics we find over and over in pro-Palestinian propaganda: reality inversion and a propensity for audacious lying.

Let’s take the second point first: the sponsoring organization, the Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA) claims that the pictures were drawn by children from 9 to 11 years of age. That’s nonsense. Look at the drawing above. Note how the viewer’s eye is drawn to the slightly off-center focal point, the child cowering in the corner, the suggestion of despair evoked by the black shading around him. Look at the effective representation of the soldier’s face with a few strokes. Look at the sureness of the lines, the bold strokes. Whoever drew this was either an adult artist or a remarkable prodigy, sophisticated both artistically and politically.

Here are two more examples:

I showed them to a professor of Art at a local university. Here is what she said about them:

The paintings (color drawings) are highly sophisticated especially in relationship to detail. Did you see the barbed wire? Also, there is a carefully drawn Star of David in each work. The authenticity of the painting is remarkable for a child’s hand. The drawing of the planes and helicopters, the man in the tower, the dynamic brushstrokes that are well conceived and controlled all seem to project a more mature approach to art. Could these “children” be in their late teens, college age, or young adults [MECA says they were 9 to 11 years old]? According to the the quote, “much of the artwork was produced by children.” I wonder how “much”? Also, it is possible that the “children” were directed by an adult who supervised and perhaps completed the initial drawing.

Like the ‘death’ of another Palestinian child, Mohammed Dura, this exhibition is an invention designed to demonize Israel.

I mentioned Palestinian reality inversion. This is the phenomenon of attributing to Israel the vicious tactics used by Arab terrorists themselves. One of these is the deliberate targeting of noncombatant children:

The Ma’alot massacre, in which 25 Israelis were killed including 22 children, the Bus of Blood (35 dead, 13 children), the attack on the nursery at Kibbutz Misgav Am (3 dead, 2 children), the Dolphinarium bombing (21 teens dead), the Sbarro Pizza bombing (15 dead, 5 children), the shooting at the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva (8 dead, 7 teens), the vicious butchering of the Fogel family (5 dead, 3 children), the antitank rocket attack on a yellow school bus (1 child) — these are just a few of a long, long list.

The Palestinians know that nothing tugs at the heartstrings more than the suffering of children. So they make ours suffer and accuse us of doing it to them.

The sponsoring organization, MECA, takes a radical position on the Arab-Israeli conflict:

• MECA founder and Executive Director Barbara Lubin wrote “I think that the Jewish State is racist to the core.”  Lubin refers to the 1948 “ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population” and wrote that “[t]he concept of ‘Jewish morality’ is truly dead. We can be fascists, terrorists, and Nazis just like everybody else.”
• In an interview, MECA Director of Gaza Projects, Dr. Mona El-Farra, explained that MECA refused USAID funding because it came with the condition that they promise “not [to] give any help or any aid whatsoever for the families of the militiamen, or their relatives, or anyone related to ‘terrorist attacks’” because “we consider it resistance” (emphasis added). — NGO Monitor

MECA plans to find another location for the show, perhaps in the street outside the museum. They are pitching the museum’s decision to cancel the show as ‘censorship’. Of course, this is nonsense — there is no free speech issue here. The museum is not required to give a platform to anyone who desires one, and it has a right to reject the exhibit on the grounds that it is inappropriate for its audience, is overt political propaganda — or because it is simply a fraud.

Technorati Tags: MOCHA, MECA, Palestinian children, Israel, children’s art

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 13th, 2011 at 9:51 am and is filed under Local interest. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.