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Tag: Gaza
Israel keeps us imprisoned in an enclave (December 16 2012) Israel keeps us imprisoned in an enclave (December 16 2012)

Yasmeen El Khoudary the Palestinian cofounded Diwan Ghazza, a cultural and knowledge-exchange platform for youth in Gaza, runs a project to preserve Gaza’s cultural heritage and history.  El Khoudary has published an article on Aljazeera titled ‘Steal what you will from the blueness of the sea and the sand of memory’. El Khoudary states “In the Middle Ages, Gaza was home to countless treasures, including rich agriculture, pottery making and wool weaving, with exports along the famous Silk Road. In 1660, a French visitor compared Gaza’s baths and markets with those of Paris and noted that Arabic, Turkish and Greek were all spoken in the streets. Where was Israel then? …our faith in humanity will not be restored if countries of the world vow more money for rebuilding Gaza. It will only be restored once the world starts looking at our cause with its brains and not with its donations, in which case, no donations will be required. The fact that the Gaza Strip is still besieged by Israel from land, sea and air, should mean that we are still under occupation and under the responsibility of the Israeli government. If Israel argues otherwise, saying that we are not under Israeli occupation, then it should relinquish its control of our borders and leave us to handle our own business. But as long as Israel keeps us imprisoned in an enclave of ambiguity, the world will keep paying and Israel will keep destroying. …I would like to prepare the international community for another Israeli argument that they will likely be hearing in a couple of years, when today’s children become the leaders of future Palestine. “We have no peace partners in Palestine,” you will hear every Israeli leader say. When you hear that, I want you to think of the 350 Palestinian children who were injured by Israel during the last six days…”

 

Inspired by Aljazeera ow.ly/fWljs image source gcmhp ow.ly/fWlgm

All created an atmosphere of despair (December 2 2012) All created an atmosphere of despair (December 2 2012)

Muhammad Abdul Bari the 59 year old British Bangladeshian secondary school teacher has published an article on Aljazeera titled ‘Israel’s scorched earth policy in Gaza could prove fatal’ discussing how the US and other western governments have failed to publicly criticise Israel for its iron-fist policy on Palestine. Bari states “Beyond Gaza, the situation in historic Palestine is not much different. Israeli land grabbing, illegal settlements and ethnic cleansing in occupied territories, forced removal of families from their homes, the increasing refugee problems, massive unemployment, daily humiliation of Palestinian people in the crossings, the erection of the “apartheid wall” – have all created an atmosphere of despair. As in its 2009 operation, Israel is trying to match its overwhelming military might with its superior media outreach in the western world. As a result, and due to what seems to be America’s depressingly unquestioned support for Israel, many in the West buy in to the Israeli narrative claiming Hamas as a “terrorist” organisation. Sadly, people have a short memory. They forget that Hamas, for all its flaws, formed the legitimate Palestinian government after winning an internationally-accepted election in 2006. The fear of being accused as anti-Semitic has inhibited many in the West from publicly criticising Israel’s historic injustice to the Palestinians. Some try to be ambivalent; in order to prove their neutrality, the only thing they do is offer some advice to Israeli and Palestinian politicians to sort out the mess on the negation table. However, an overwhelming majority of people in the Muslim world and many in Asia, Africa and Latin America consider Israel a Pariah state, supported by the world’s sole superpower, the United States. Many consider Israel as a Goliath when it comes to the Palestinian people.”

 

Inspired by Aljazeera ow.ly/fuNhQ image source Facebook ow.ly/fuNMd

Send Gaza back to the Middle Ages (November 26 2012) Send Gaza back to the Middle Ages (November 26 2012)

Michael Marder the Spanish Ikerbasque Research Professor of Philosophy has published an article on Aljazeera titled ‘Israel’s medievalism’ claiming calls to send Gaza “back to the Middle Ages” only reinforce Israel’s current state of medievalism. Marder states “In one of the most brazen and, at the same time, frank declarations to date, the Israeli Minister of the Interior, Eli Yishai stated regarding the war currently being waged on the Gaza Strip: “The goal of the operation is to send Gaza back to the Middle Ages. Only then will Israel be calm for forty years.” With these words, he revealed much more than the subtext behind the official reasons for the invasion, namely restoring Israel’s “deterrence capabilities” and destroying Hamas missile launchers. He also shed light on Binyamin Netanyahu’s vision of peace not as a relation among equals but as the calm of the defeated, the vision consistent with the use of war to bolster the Prime Minister’s domestic image as a tough, military leader in a run-up to his likely re-election in January 2013. Yishai’s Biblical allusions to forty years of wandering in the desert are not accidental. After all, his political party, Shas, is the utterly fanatical, religious faction in the Netanyahu government. Its ideal of Israel, too, is not very far from being medieval – a country where men and women would be segregated in public transport as well as in every area of public life, where freedom of religion would be a pipe dream, and where homosexuality would be deemed a plague “as toxic as bird flu”. In brief, both the domestic and the foreign policies of Yishai’s party are based on a venomous mix of anti-modernism, theocracy, religious parochialism, and disrespect for human rights.”

 

Inspired by Aljazeera ow.ly/fuDtu image source Michael Marder ow.ly/fuDji

Khader Adnan the 33 year old Palestinian prisoner in Israel without any formal charges against him arrested for “activities that threaten regional security” ended his 66-day hunger strike after a deal reached for his release from custody on 17 April. Adnan’s hunger strike sparked solidarity protests across the West Bank and Gaza, and sympathy hunger strikes by other Palestinian prisoners. Catherine Ashton, the EU foreign affairs chief, said that Adnan’s case was of “great concern… Detainees have the right to be informed about the charges underlying any detention and be subject to a fair trial.” An Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev had defended the use of administrative detention orders, saying Adnan was “no boy scout”. According to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, “over the years, Israel has held thousands of Palestinians in administrative detention, for periods ranging from several months to several years”. Under international law, the measure can be used “only in the most exceptional cases, as the last means available for preventing danger that cannot be thwarted by less harmful means”.

 

Inspired by Richard Falk http://ow.ly/9dodw image source Alternative News http://ow.ly/9doFh

My work digital art is about iconic people, places and events of our day.  Recorded visually through daily compilations of manipulated digital images, posted online and disseminated via online media and social networks. The works are diaristic in nature that metaphorically record a spectator’s experience of the contemporary digital age.  The resulting work intentionally has a painterly aesthetic acknowledging my historical painting practice.

Adapting Pop Art’s notion of mass media imagery into a context of the contemporary digital age, the work draws on a myriad points of reference. Utilizing fractured images to provide an allusion to the digital noise pounding away daily into our sub consciousness.  The work diverges from the traditional Pop Art notion of a pronounced repetition of a consumer icon, instead this work focuses on the deluge of contemporary digital content. The compilation of the fragmented imagery is vividly distractive, not unlike cable surfing or a jaunt through Times Square.

This digital art work is premised on the basis that Pop art in its beginnings, freeze-framed what consumers of popular culture experienced into iconic visual abstractions. With the advent of the techno age, visual information circulates in such quantities, so rapidly and exponentially, that to comprehend a fraction of it all becomes a kind of production process in itself.  Hence this work considers fragmented elements of Pop Culture through an artistic and conceptual exploration of specific people and events of the day.

The works are presented as individual pieces printed with Archival-Inks on 308g Cottonrag-paper, along with A3 sized bound monthly editions, and monthly looped video compilations.
www.ianbunn.com

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