An outrageous new “art” exhibit, which refers to Israel as a “colonial power” and Palestinian terrorists as “fighters” and “victims of the Israeli military,” has opened in a museum in Paris. Suicide bombers are referred to as “militants” who heroically set out to “assassinate Israelis.”
According to the JTA, the exhibition of 68 photos entitled “Death” by Ahlam Shibli opened on May 28 at the Jeu de Paume museum of contemporary art in Paris. The museum is subsidized by the French government.
The museum’s English description reveals (emphasis added):
This work is based on the demand for recognition that became apparent with the Second Intifada, the Palestinian uprising against the colonial power in the territories occupied by Israel since 1967. The Second Intifada lasted from 2000 to 2005 and claimed several thousand deaths on the Palestinian side.
Death exhibits some of the ways in which the ones who are absent become present again—“represented”: Palestinian fighters, who fell in the course of their armed resistance against the Israeli incursions, and victims of the Israeli military killed under different circumstances (Shaheed and Shaheeda); militants who carried out attacks which they knew would lead to their death, among them the men and women who detonated explosives on their own bodies to assassinate Israelis (Istishhadi and Istishhadiya), and the prisoners. The former are dead, the latter are alive, jailed for a large part if not the rest of their lives.
The representations designate any person who lost his or her life as a result of the Israeli occupation of Palestine: a martyr.
This exhibition justifies and glorifies Palestinian terrorists.
The JTA continues:
According to CRIF, the umbrella body of French Jewish communities, the people commemorated in the photos are “mostly from the [Fatah-affiliated] al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades [of Hamas] and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.” All three are designated by the European Union as terrorist groups.
One of the photos is of Osama Buchkar, a PFLP operative who killed three people and wounded 59 in a terrorist attack he carried out at an open market in Netanya on May 19, 2002. The caption to his picture says he “committed a martyr mission in Netanya.”
Indeed, the photo above, which includes the accompanying caption, shows the family living room of Khalil Marshoud, a leader of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade from Nablus, responsible for numerous terror attacks in Israel according to the IDF. Marshoud was eliminated by the IDF in a targeted killing in 2004.
HR CEO Joe Hyams said:
Terrorists should not be deified and held up as “martyrs” in a publicly funded exhibition. There is nothing artistic in the glorification and justification of terror, particularly when government money is involved. How is it that taxpayer’s money is being thrown away on promoting organizations that have been designated as terrorist groups by the EU itself? This exhibition should be brought to a close immediately.
You can register your complaints with the Jeu de Paume museum by clicking here and to the department that deals with museums in the French Ministry of Culture and Communications – [email protected]
UPDATE: The email addresses for staff at the Jeu de Paume were those given by the museum’s website. Thank you to those of you who alerted us to email addresses that may no longer be working. It is possible that the museum may have withdrawn some of their addresses due to the volume of complaints received. We will endeavor to update any email addresses as necessary. At this time, the addresses given in this article are correct to the best of our knowledge.
