Masarat, Belgium in the Middle East, by the Islam in Europe blog

Article by Esther in Islam in Europe:

Masarat is an art project subsidized by the Walloon government. It brings Palestinian artists to Brussels, some of whom had made controversial hateful statements against Israel and calls for violence.

One of their art projects is the following picture, showing Israel as Flanders, the West Bank as Wallonia and the Gaza Strip as the disputed municipality of Voeren. Jerusalem is transformed into Brussels.
Masarat has removed the picture from their site after it was criticized in the news. [The map was removed because of strong Flemish opposition (see below), and not out of regard for Belgian Jews' alarm at the way the Belgian French-speaking government seems to be turning a blind eye to the most hostile aspects of the festival, such as qualifying the separation wall as "the wall of segregation" ("mur de la ségrégation") and the displaying of the Zan Studio posters in Belgium and France.]

Huub Broers, mayor of Voeren, was not happy about his municipality being portrayed as the Gaza Strip. He said that the the intention was to portray both Flemish and Israelis as villians who occupy land and oppress others. Broers says that this can lead to new problems in the Belgian "language-battle" and that peace in the Middle East will never come about through taking one-sided points of view.

The Flemish minister of the interior, Marino Keulen, said that this picture comes to shock and provoke and not to inform, and that he finds it tasteless.

The exhibition had been shown in Paris. The UPFJ (French Jewish Business Union) criticized the Walloon government for subsidizing such a project, and thereby confirming such sick propoganda which is shockingly both anti-Flemish and anti-Israel.

Michael Freilich, head editor of Belgian Jewish magazine Joods Actueel, says this picture calls for the destruction of Israel. I don't think it calls for the destruction of Israel more than it calls for the destruction of the Arab Palestine.

The French speaking Belgians, rich off their natural resources, have for years oppressed the majority Flemish. The Flemish, being an industrial nation, have prospered in the current economy and are now subsidizing the poorer Walloons. If Flanders would secede from Belgium, would Wallonia be able to survive as an independent state? Palestinians are usually portrayed as the helpless victims against the Israeli superpower, but I'm not sure this art project paints either 'Palestine' or Wallonia in good light.

Brussels is a historically Flemish city which through government aided immigration has been transformed into a French-speaking city. The city is now divided among enclaves of Dutch and French speakers. There is certainly a basis to compare it to Jerusalem, a historically Jewish city which has regained its Jewish majority in the mid 1800s, except that nobody expects the 'Brussels-problem' to be solved by the end of the year.

This art project super-imposes a European problem on the Middle East, but I think that it just emphasizes the complexity of the European issues. These problems are not less complex than what goes on in the Middle East, but they enjoy much more favorable PR, as well as a wish to solve problems peacefully, without resorting to violence.

See also: Marking Israel's 60th anniversary...
2008: Israel is wiped off the map and replaced by Flaanderen (Flanders)
Content of Belgian-sponsored Palestinian festival irks Jews, JTA
Palestinian festival sparks controversy - Belgium
Zan Studio of Ramallah - anti-Israeli artists invited to Belgium
Brussels: Lebanon war mock tribunal condemns Israel and U.S.

Content of Belgian-sponsored Palestinian festival irks Jews, JTA

The whole thing is alarming, if only because no Belgian French-speaking politician, scholar, columnist, newspaper has voiced a single word of protest, let alone condemnation. Hopefully their silence only betrays ignorance or indifference. Why were these shocking posters displayed in Paris?

“Belgian Jewish leader Joël Rubinfeld had a queasy feeling last year when he first heard about a state-sponsored Palestinian cultural festival planned for Belgium.

Now, he says, his worst suspicions have been confirmed.

A preview of the festival last month in Paris featured posters that called for a boycott of Israel and compared Israeli raids on militants in the Gaza Strip to Hitler's bombing of Guernica, Spain. The posters were displayed at the Paris offices of Belgium's French regional government for one week in late March.

With the display slated to move to Belgium in the fall, Rubinfeld, the president of Belgium’s main French-speaking Jewish umbrella group, the Brussels-based Coordinating Committee of Belgian Jewish Organizations, is not pleased. He is pressing the event's sponsor, Belgium's French regional cultural ministry, to spike the posters.

Rubinfeld's angst could foreshadow a controversy that may ensue when the festival of visual arts, dance, theater, debates and film makes its rounds in September and October throughout Belgium’s French-speaking region, which is home to some 3.4 million people, including about 17,000 Jews.

One boycott poster featured in the festival shows a teddy bear in chains and urges viewers not to buy “products of the occupation” because “Israel imprisons Palestinian children”. The poster was created by the Ramallah-based Zan Studio, whose founder has said Israel has no right to exist. Another poster shows Hamas and Fatah shaking hands and making the victory sign.“The French community of Belgium is saying it’s supporting art, but they are supporting a political event”, complained Odile Margaux, a Belgian Jew who represents the Israeli Labor Party in Belgium.

“We see these as political, not cultural, posters”, Rubinfeld said. “Why is my government paying for this?”

He said the cultural minister of Belgium's regional French government, Marie-Dominique Simonet, promised him several months ago that she would not allow “hate-mongering” to be part of the festival, which is called Masarat, Arabic for “path”.

Masarat is being spearheaded by the Palestinian Authority's mission to the European Union in Brussels.

P.A. representatives did not return e-mails or calls from JTA seeking comment on the festival’s content.

Simonet’s chief of staff, Alain Demaegd, said the festival gives “Palestinian artists a space for expression, which they have very little of at the moment”. The festival, he added, “is not political”. Demaegd said there are rules governing the tone of the exhibits.

“The guidelines are no encouragement of violence, no denying Israel's right to exist, no defense of violent terrorism”, he said.

After the festival’s posters went on display last month in Paris, Rubinfeld complained to Demaegd, who said as of now “there is no decision” about whether the posters violate those guidelines.

The minister “is not going to judge the artistic merits of the works”, Demaegd said.
“They just don’t get it”, Rubinfeld told JTA. “They don’t understand how having such posters can and will hurt Jews within their country, and it is citizens of their country they should be responsible to”.

Rubinfeld said he wrote an official letter of complaint to Simonet demanding that the posters and similar inflammatory material not be shown in Belgium. (…)

Isaac Franco, a board member of Belgium’s Radio Judaica, said Masarat is about defaming Israel.

“The posters shown incite hatred, anti-Semitism and promote terrorism”, he said. “We want the ministry to make sure these posters do not come to the festival”.

Rubinfeld says he does not object in principal to his government's funding of the Palestinian festival, but questions why a non-country should receive such support.

“It’s not like we have sponsored a Tibetan festival or a Kurdish festival”, he said.

“It’s good that people learn about Palestinian culture, but we are afraid of importing the Middle East conflict to Belgium. You promote hostility against Israel, and the next day a rabbi gets beat up”.

Demaegd suggested the reason the festival has stirred up controversy is because it’s rare for a European government to sponsor any type of Palestinian event.” Read the full article here

See also:
Palestinian festival sparks controversy - Belgium
Zan Studio of Ramallah - anti-Israeli artists invited to Belgium
Brussels: Lebanon war mock tribunal condemns Israel and U.S.
Waals Palestina project zet kwaad bloed

2008: Israel is wiped off the map and replaced by Flaanderen (Flanders)

I have written on this blog about the Palestinian cultural festival Masarat being held this year in Belgium: namely in Brussels, in Wallonia and now in Paris (sensibly, Flanders has not joined in), and which is a Belgian French Community government-funded initiative. It was feared from the outset that the whole event would be highly politicized and used to discredit Israel, this has indeed proved the case.

Take for instance:

- the use of inflammatory rhetoric: "the wall of segregation";

- the choice of guest artists: Zan Studio of Ramallah whose members deny Israel’s right of existence and chastize moderate Palestinian artists who cooperate with their Israeli counterparts;

- the timing: 2008, meant to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel.

On its 60th anniversary, Israel is wiped off the face of the earth and duly replaced

The festival has now gone one step further. A map has been posted on the festival's website in which Gaza becomes Fourons, the West Bank is depicted as Wallonia (co-organizers of the festival) and Israel is cast as Flanders.

The “artists/mapmakers” supposedly got their inspiration from the fact that Palestinians are called “the Belgians” in neighboring Jordan (an extensive search on the internet has provided no evidence to substantiate this claim). Palestinian and Belgian writers will be exploring "the complexity of Belgian and Palestinian identities" in Paris, in Ramallah and in Belgium (Wallonia and Brussels).

Columnist Menahem Macina (UPJF) has written two fascinating pieces about the odd configuration of the map and the underlying message. He believes, among other assumptions, that the organizers were miffed because the Flemish Government did not join in. Who is going to blame them for that?

Made in Brussels/Palestine and exported to Paris

The whole thing is objectionable and insulting in the extreme. To add insult to injury this coarse exercise in political propaganda packaged as "culture" and dialogue with the "Other" is being exported from Brussels and Palestine to a foreign capital, Paris, in an effort to delegitimize Israel. The silly event was totally ignored by the French media and cultural establishment.
See also:
Zan Studio of Ramallah - anti-Israeli artists invited to Belgium
Israel on trial in Brussels: Iranian and Syrian Ambassadors give standing ovation to judges

Zan Studio of Ramallah - anti-Israeli artists invited to Belgium

A major Palestinian cultural festival - Masarat/Palestine - is taking place this year in Brussels and Wallonia (Flanders does not participate). In the run up to the festival, the city of Mons (where the SHAPE is based) held an exhibition of works by Zan Studio of Ramallah, an "artistic association of young graphic designers", to be repeated later this year. The choice is shocking because Zan Studio militates against the existence of Israel. The organisers could have picked Palestinian artists who think otherwise (see interview below). Zan Studio’s modest artistic talents do not explain the choice either. Why then were they chosen? Israel is celebrating its 60th birthday, but not in Brussels, the capital of Europe!

Basel Nadr, a founding member of Zan Studio, gave an interview to a Belgian NGO and explained his total rejection of Israel. His views are frightening:

"For us, and for the vast majority of Palestinians, Israel, within the 1948 borders, is a colony, and the people, or their descendents, who live there, are colonialists. The creation of Israel is, for us, an unlawful dispossession that began in 1948."
(This is an outright exaggeration – to put it mildly. A recent survey by the Near East Consulting indicates that 72% of Palestinians support a peace settlement with Israel and 69% should change its position regarding Israel.)

"I observe that [Israeli] art is comparable to that of Europeans, Westerns. It serves to prove that they have no links with the land they occupy, its history, its evolution."

"At present, I am opposed to most cooperation projects … For exchanges between artists to take place, we need to be on the same footing or to cooperate in the fight against Zionism. Many of the present initiatives are based on the false idea that peace is possible prior to our recovering all our rights. That’s unacepptable."

The political posters on the Zan Studio website reflect their implacable hostility to Israel, to the U.S. and to the West. All the usual stereotypes are trotted out. One poster accuses Israel of being a criminal State for its supposed incarceration of children, it shows a chained teddy bear with a lock marked "Made in Israel". Another depicts the well-rehearsed half orange/half grenade, labelled "Product of Israel". And, surprise surprise, the Coca Cola can poster, the Johnson's baby shampoo poster, the Picasso’s Guernica poster, and this one.

The festival is being sponsored by the French Community of Belgium. See:
Palestinian festival sparks controversy - Belgium
Wallonia-Brussels presents Masarat/Palestine 2008
Also in Brussels in February 2008:
International citizens' tribunal to try Israel in Brussels
and Solomonia:
Palestinian clowns to tour Belgium
The above poster was sponsored by three Belgian NGOs

Palestinian festival sparks controversy - Belgium

Haviv Rettig reports in The Jerusalem Post: "A Belgian government Web site has begun advertising a performance of Palestinian clowns that conveys "the real life of Palestinians separated from their water, their land, their history and their relatives by the wall of segregation." The group of Palestinian clowns from Ramallah will tour Belgium in February as part of the "Masarat" festival of Palestinian art announced by the French Community of Belgium. Under the unique Belgian system of government, the French Community is an official institution of the Belgian government responsible for the education system and cultural life of some four million French-speaking Belgians. While the festival is meant to be a cultural festival - the French Community has sponsored similar seasonal events showcasing the cultures of Congo and Benin - some observers of Belgium in the Jewish world are worried it will become politicized. As part of the festival, an official Web site of the French Community, agenda.be, lists the clown performance with the title "Circus Behind the Wall." The Web site describes the visit as "a clown, acrobats and a circus as a means of resistance and struggle." According to French Community Minister of International Relations Marie-Dominique Simonet, the festival focuses on Palestinian culture separate from Israel because Israel is a "rich country" - outside the "north-south" framework of the festivals, which try to showcase a poorer southern nation. At the same time, the minister added, Israel already enjoys cultural and scientific cooperation with Belgium's French Community. Meanwhile, the French-speaking Belgian newspaper La Libre quotes Palestinian representative in Brussels Leila Shaid as saying that, in the paper's words, "we should not always talk of Israel when we talk about Palestine and... it should be possible to show 'simply' artists of a country." But some people are not as confident that the festival can be disconnected from politics, and anti-Israel politics at that. Reached by phone on a visit in Israel, Joel Rubinfeld, president of the Coordinating Committee of Jewish Organizations of Belgium, said that "there is a strong political message behind this. When you speak about Palestinians or Israel today, everything is political. Buying a Jaffa orange in the supermarket is a political gesture." Rubinfeld calls himself a "pro-Palestinian Zionist, since I want to see a Palestinian state," and he believes Simonet may not know about the political messages being explicitly portrayed throughout the festival, including in the "resistance" message of the circus performance. Yet, he says, it is Simonet's "responsibility" as the minister in charge of the initiative. Over the past few year, flare-ups of violence in the Middle East have resulted in some vandalism and attacks directed at Jews in Belgium. "I will tell Minister Simonet that she has to be very careful that political activities aren't being carried out under the cover of culture, that this isn't the sort of thing that will excite young people to go into the street to throw a Molotov cocktail at a synagogue or attack a rabbi in the street," Rubinfeld said.”

On the same subject, see the official Wallonia-Brussels website: Wallonia-Brussels presents Masarat/Palestine 2008

Also in Brussels in February 2008: International citizens' tribunal to try Israel in Brussels
and Solomonia’s comments