Filed under: Understanding Perspectives
Welcome to my exhibit! Here I am compiling different photographs and pieces of art that focus on different aspects of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. Included are perspectives not just from Palestinians and Israelis, but also the response from other parts of the world. As you walk through the rooms, you will feel the open, accepting welcome that Israel extends to all Jews.
The first room is painted white and you will hear traditional Mizrahi music playing, but this is all a part of the New Jew identity, you are not quite Middle Eastern but your culture still borrows recipes and flaunts music from the societies that many Jews shared with their Arab brothers and sisters. You will view photographs from the early days of Israel, when people first began to fulfil their Zionist identities, living on kibbutzim (self-sustaining communities) and marching in independence parades. The next room, painted grey, you will see protest signs from outside nations. These signs say that you should boycott Israeli products, they have been produced on occupied land. You feel conflicted, you might not have realized that Israel was something that people opposed so staunchly. Then you see a photograph from an Israel Parade in America. These American Jews are proud to be Zionist and feel connected to Israel. They think that the rest of the Middle East is committing crimes against the Jewish people in their newly developed homeland. You walk to the final room, it’s very dark in here. You can hardly remember that it was a sunny day outside. There are photos of Palestinians, they look hurt and concerned. You see a side that you hadn’t seen before. When you walk out of the dark room, you are confronted by an infographic that shows the true makeup of the land of Palestine/Israel. You never realized that so much of what you thought was the “West Bank” is actually occupied by radical Israeli settlers.
Self-Analysis
The overarching goal for my exhibit was to show photos from multiple perspectives of the occupation in Palestine. I wanted to show how Israelis saw the situation, how Palestinians saw the situation (as well as what they are going through under the Israeli regime), and additionally how the outside world sees the situation. I picked mostly photographs because I felt like they best conveyed the kinds of injustices that Palestinians are going through as their land is being occupied. Of course I could have picked more interpretive pieces that expressed the situation of the Palestinians, but I felt like photos remained the most true and were the best thing to elicit feelings from my audience. I would want to display my exhibit in America because I think that many Americans do not get to see the full story of what is happening in Palestine/Israel because our news sources often only show the Israeli side of the situation.
I decided to have traditional Mizrahi (Jews from Middle Eastern countries) music playing in the background of my exhibit because I feel like it’s important to remind people (especially American Jews, who are mostly Ashkenazi (Jews from European countries)) that many Jews came from the same countries and lived in peace with the people they now see as their enemies. I arranged the pieces in different rooms, segmented from each other to be symbolic of how segmented the area of Palestine/Israel is. Palestinians are not allowed to travel outside of the West Bank without special permission, this makes it very hard for them to travel internationally because the only airport in the area is near Tel Aviv. I chose images that focused on the types of protest that are being done both against the Palestinians and against the Israelis to show just how radically different each side sees the situation. I also included historical images that I think would convey a sense of pride or nationalism from both sides. I think this would force the audience to try to make sense of how both sides feel such an inherent right to the land and are mostly unwilling to accept the validity of the other side’s view.
