Artwatch:Cultural Amnesia: The Museum of Tolerance |
By Farris Wahbeh |
So said Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger last May 2, in Jerusalem at the groundbreaking ceremony for a new Simon Wiesenthal Center for Human Dignity and a Museum of Tolerance, which is the Center�s educational arm. The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC), named after the Ukrainian-born survivor of the Nazi Death camps who later became a world famous Nazi-hunter, was founded in 1977 as an international center for �Holocaust remembrance, the defense of human rights and the Jewish people.� The organization is supported by an international member base of 400,000 and is headquartered in Los Angeles, with offices in New York, Toronto, Miami, Jerusalem, Paris and Buenos Aires. The SWC�s first Museum of Tolerance (MOT) was opened in 1993 in Los Angeles as a �high tech, hands-on experiential museum that focuses on two central themes through unique interactive exhibits: the dynamics of racism and prejudice in America and the history of the Holocaust�the ultimate example of man�s inhumanity to man.�
The new MOT in Jerusalem, which was conceived by SWC�s Dean and Founder, Marvin
Hier, is slated to open between 2006 to 2008 with a price tag of $150 million.
The MOT Jerusalem will be designed by the esteemed international superstar-architect-of-the-moment,
Frank Gehry. The SWC in Jerusalem will house not only MOT but also a full three-acre
museum campus including an international conference center, a grand hall, an
education center and a library.
While the SWC in Jerusalem seems like an ideal ground for highlighting violations
of human rights against the Jewish people, something seems to have been forgotten
in the process�human rights violations against Palestinians in Israel by the
Israeli government. One example of this historical amnesia is the fact that
the SWC will be built on top of an ancient Muslim cemetery that has now become
a dilapidated parking lot.
The leftist politician and former Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem, Meron Benvenisti,
writing in Ha�aretz, confirms the hesitation that many feel about the SWC and
MOT moving into Jerusalem: �It is difficult to imagine a project so hallucinatory,
so irrelevant, so foreign, so megalomaniac, as the Museum of Tolerance. The
mere attempt to stick the term tolerance to a building so intolerant to its
surroundings is ridiculous.� Benvenisti also acknowledges the plight of Palestinians
in the occupied territories: �Fanatic, brutal Jerusalem, saturated with the
ambition to gain exclusive possession over it, will take pride in a site that
preaches equality between communities and the brotherhood of nations, and from
its rooftops will be seen the homes of Palestinians, whose struggle for freedom
is always defined as �terror.��
According to Samuel G. Freedman in the New York Times, while the museum�s content
is still in the early stages, the director of Los Angeles� MOT, Liebe Geft,
has already solicited ideas from Israeli novelists, political scientists and
religious leaders. So far, however, the central exhibition at MOT Jerusalem,
which is conceived by Mr. Hier, will highlight the journey of the Exodus�a ship
that carried Jews from Europe after WWII and was later denied entry into British
controlled Jerusalem.
Since the museum�s mission is to specifically highlight the violations of human
rights against Jews, Mr. Hier, speaking to the New York Times, has said that
MOT is not about Palestinians. �It�s not about the experience of the Palestinian
people. When they have a state, they�ll have their own museum.� For a museum
that boasts of highlighting the effects of human rights violations and the practice
of tolerance, it seems rather odd that such an intentional omission would be
allowed.
The SWC�s MOT Jerusalem directly conflicts with their mission of confronting
�important contemporary issues,� such as racism, terrorism and genocide, when
it turns its back on the Palestinian situation�a situation that is known worldwide
as an �important contemporary issue.� For instance, in 1949, the United Nations
General Assembly passed resolution 302 (IV) to carry out direct relief and works
programmes for Palestinian refugees that were displaced following the Israeli
incursion into Palestine, otherwise known as the Arab-Israeli conflict. In 1950,
The United Nations Reliefs and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near
East (UNRWA), which works with refugees and refugee camps in Israel and has
seen the number of Palestinian refugees rise to 4 million in 2002, was the off-spring
of Resolution 302 (IV), and the General Assembly has renewed UNRWA�s mandate
repeatedly since 1949 until June 2005. After Israel invaded East Jerusalem,
the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 Six-Day-War, the United Nations Security
Council passed resolution 242 which calls for the �withdrawal of Israeli armed
forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict� and highlights the
�inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war.� Interestingly, the
SWC is an accredited NGO at both the UN and its cultural division of the United
Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
Even if this form of cultural etiquette may come as a surprise to many, this
is not the first time that the SWC has turned its back on human rights atrocities.
The center�s MOT in Los Angeles came under fire by the city�s Armenian community�which
is one of largest outside of Armenia today�in 2003 when the museum retracted
their pledge of including the Armenian genocide by the Turkish Ottoman Empire
as part of their permenant installation. A group of Armenian-American college
students even staged a six-day hunger strike in front of the MOT as a sign of
protest against the museum�s refusal to incorporate the topic into the permanent
exhibition.
Web sites of Interest:www.wiesenthal.com/mot/
www.museumofamnesia.org/
portal.unesco.org |
While Israel is bracing herself for a new cultural display of �tolerance,�
several Israeli reservists are exhibiting the exact opposite. In a June exhibition
titled �Breaking the Silence� at the Academy for Geographic Photography in Tel
Aviv, three Israeli Reservists, Micha Kurz, Yehuda Shaul and Yonathon Baumfeld,
who finished their three years of mandatory service in Hebron, exhibited videotapes
and photographs detailing the mistreatment of Palestinians under Israeli army
rule. The exhibition was intended to portray what actually occurs during mandatory
service with the Israeli army. In a letter addressed to visitors at the entrance
of the exhibit, the soldiers said: �We decided to speak out. Hebron isn�t in
outer space. It�s one hour from Jerusalem.�
Among the exhibition photographs, some images included Palestinians that are
blindfolded and bound, and countless pictures of racist and near fascist graffiti
created by Israeli settlers and directed towards the Palestinians. One such
photo includes the phrase: �Arabs to the Gas Chambers.�
The videotapes included in the exhibition comprise testimonials by 70 Israeli
soldiers who reveal the use of Palestinians as human shields and the overall
mistreatment of Palestinians in general. The Israeli Military Police interrogated
several of the artists-cum-reservists, including Micha Kurz. Kurz, after a seven-hour
questioning session, responded to the press: �The army wants to keep us quiet
and scare us way. They�re not going to shut us up, because we have a lot to
say, and they�re not going to scare us off.\"
F Newsmagazine
September 2004