Pictures at an exhibition

The Museum of Art at Ein Harod is an anomaly! It's the third largest art museum in Israel, yet notwithstanding its size it is situated off the beaten track, far from the main population centres.

The museum certainly isn't an outsize provincial community art corner In fact from the start it was planned to be an art centre, a tangible expression of cultural decentralisation.

Once Ein Harod was a remote far-flung rural community, but today improved highways have made it easily accessible, barely an eighty minute drive from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. What's more, if you live in Haifa and its environs it takes less than an hour to reach the Museum. The museum's director Galia Bar Or is more of a trend setter than a trend follower. She has a keen eye and an intuitive "feeling” for young talented artists. Galia has also "revived" long forgotten artists rejected by the mainstream galleries.

Currently on display at the museum is an exhibition of contemporary Israeli art, mostly from a private collection..

In addition the museum is active in aiding smaller lesser known museums and galleries. One of these museums, the Um al Fahm art gallery has enjoyed preferential support and guidance. In an e-mail sent to a wide gallery-goers public Galia wrote about the special bond that has been forged between the Um al Fahm art gallery and the museum at Ein Harod. If you’re travelling north Galia recommends a stopover at Um al Fahm to visit the gallery.

These days most people travelling north will choose route 65 that runs through Wadi Ara past Um al Fahm and continues to the Jezreel Valley.

However, the clash between the police and Arab rioters in September 2000 was a traumatic event in Arab –Jewish relations in this country. Some Israeli Jews avoided the Wadi Ara route preferring to travel by an alternative pass further north. Commuters who did drive along route 65 through Wadi Ara didn't stop along the way. It was an unwritten and undeclared popular boycott. Drive but don't buy. With the passage of time the cognizant boycott has all but disappeared, however few people break their journey in Wadi Ara when they travel north.

Approximately 45,000 people live in Um al Fahm. In 1948 its population numbered 4,500, most of them farmers. The village was founded in the thirteenth century maybe during the Mameluke conquest. Originally the villagers were charcoal burners. Eventually they exhausted the supply of wood they cut from the native bush in the hills above the wadi, so the charcoal burners turned to farming. Today more and more Wadi Ara district residents are employed in construction work. Some of them are independent contractors.

In 1949 at the end of the War of Independence 15 villages along Wadi Ara held by the Arab Legion forces were ceded to Israel in an exchange of territories formulated in the General Armistice Agreement.

During a visit to London last week Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon referred to Wadi Ara in an interview he gave to the pan-Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat

Ayalon suggested reversing the 1949 agreement by returning the Wadi Ara villages to the "future Palestinian state." In exchange Ayalon proposed that the Palestinians relinquish their claim to the land in the West Bank where Israelis have settled.

"Arab Israelis say they are proud of being Palestinians. So they have nothing to lose if they decide to go and live within a Palestinian state," Ayalon said in the interview.

In a separate statement fellow Knesset member Moshe Matalon also from (Yisrael Beiteinu) the party that forms the extreme right flank of Netanyahu's coalition government, added the following moral support:

"The words of Deputy Minister Ayalon expressed clearly the deepest desire of most citizens, even those who do not admit it."

Not quite, at least according to a survey conducted last year by the Israel Democracy Institute. The findings of the survey presented to President Shimon Peres were that,
“53% of the Jewish public supports encouraging Arabs to emigrate from Israel. 77% of immigrants from the former Soviet Union support this idea, compared with 47% of the veteran public."

I wonder what would be the results of a like survey regarding Muslim immigrants if it were conducted in some European countries.

Four years ago Avigdor Lieberman made a less generous offer. Lieberman who served then as Minister of “Strategic Affairs” in Ehud Olmert’s coalition government repeatedly called for expelling all Arabs and Palestinians from the country by transferring them to Jordan and other Arab states. By comparison Ayalon's land swap proposal “seems meek.”

Understandably Arab Knesset member, Dr.Ahmed Tibi, was incensed by Danny Ayalon’s “repatriation” proposal. “Arabs are the natives of this country and are not immigrants.” said Dr. Tibi and added,

“If they want to expel us, I tell them, the people who came here last should leave first.” Of course Lieberman doesn’t subscribe to the LIFO principle.

It’s reasonable to suppose that Ayalon’s proposal is no more than a pipe dream.

At this juncture permit me another pipe-dream, namely “ A land without a people for a people without a land.”

Although usually assumed to have been a Zionist slogan, the phrase was in fact coined by a Christian Restorationist clergyman in 1843 and it continued to be fairly widely used for almost a century by Christian Restorationists.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth century period in which this phrase was in common use, the Arab inhabitants of Palestine did not in their view constitute a coherent national group, "a people", and, therefore, Christian Restorationists argued that the "land of Israel" should be given to the Jewish people.

A number of Zionist leaders made use of the phrase; however it never came into widespread use among Jewish Zionists.

In “Innocents Abroad” Mark Twain mentions the biblical scenes depicted in copper plate illustrations hung on the walls of his parents’ home. The harsh reality he encountered on his Holy Land visit in 1869 dispelled any illusions he had about this land “flowing with milk and honey.” Fortunately he lived long enough to witness the first stages of the rebirth of the Jewish nation. Not a return to the copper plate images but a new vibrant renaissance aware of the past while building for the future.

The “rogues gallery” repeatedly displayed by the Dubai police and relayed to nearly every news media outlet has aroused considerable speculation regarding the true identity of the assassins.

Jerusalem based correspondent for the New York Times Isabel Keshner

wrote, ”Officially, Israel has neither confirmed nor denied involvement in the case, as is customary in delicate matters of intelligence and national security. But since the news of the assassination broke last month, Israel has unofficially made the story its own, with newspapers blaring congratulatory headlines and government ministers praising the Mossad’s director.”

Surprisingly the Mossad received praise from a most unexpected quarter.

Al-Ahram, the state-run Egyptian newspaper,published an article last week praising Meir Dagan, the head of the Israeli Mossad.

The slightly bizarre article -- written by Ashraf Abu al-Hawl, the former head of Al-Ahram's Gaza bureau -- called Dagan the "Superman" of Israel. It commends him for working to undermine Iran's nuclear programme, and for opposing Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Hamas and the Syrian government.

As more information about the assassination became available this week , especially the footage taken by the Dubai surveillance cameras, it appears that that the operation lacked certain “professional attributes.” The disguises were amateurish and the fake passports used by the assassins caused embarrassment to Britain, Ireland, maybe France and certainly Israel.

The Dubai police is almost 100% sure that the Mossad assassinated Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, So far no one in Israel has stated unequivocally that the Mossad “made the hit.” The only exception I know of is journalist Amir Oren who called on Meir Dagan to resign.

I’ve read some weird and wonderful theories about the assassination's perpetrators. All of them speculative, none of them based on reputable information. Here are a few:

It was carried by an organisation with a good motive for killing Mabhouh and

was made to look like a Mossad assassination. However, the flaws revealed by the surveillance cameras indicate that it was either a bad Mossad assassination or an amateurish copycat job.

At the other end of the scale let’s consider the possibility that it really was a Mossad assassination and was purposely flawed to make it appear that another organisation was responsible for the kill.

The bottom line is that Mahmoud al-Mabhouh is dead and really that’s all that matters.

Have a nice weekend.

Beni 18^th of February, 2010.