Journal of the mental environment
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever”
Photos: Banksy
When street artist Banksy’s pictures mysteriously appeared on the West Bank “partition wall” in 2005, they drew the world’s attention to the barrier in ways that dozens of protests and op-ed pieces could not.
Proposed in 1992 by former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, the concrete and razor-wire wall was originally planned to follow the 350-kilometer Green Line (the 1949 armistice line from the Arab-Israeli war). Currently, the barrier runs over 600 kilometers as it winds to encapsulate Israeli settlements in the West Bank. For the Israelis, the wall represents increased security from terrorist attacks, as well as a way to consolidate the legitimacy of settlements. For the Palestinians, the wall symbolizes apartheid and economic oppression, separating thousands of West Bank residents from their workplaces, their schools, and their former farmlands. To the rest of the world, the wall represents a geopolitical impasse in the heart of the Middle East.
Banksy returned to the West Bank in December 2007, leaving six new drawings on the wall near Bethlehem. In the same month, Dutch activist group Sendamessage invited people from around the world to leave their own mark: for a fee of €30, Sendamessage commissions locals to spray-paint requested messages on the wall, sending snapshots of the finished text via email.
This publicity comes at a critical time. The disastrous war in Lebanon left Israel in a fragile position, its myth of invincibility shattered and the credibility of its leaders deeply undermined. The seven-year silence between Israel and Palestine was finally broken by peace talks in Annapolis last year. And in January, President Bush made his strongest public statement yet pushing Israel to give up land for an independent Palestine.
Timing is key. The wall is only two years from completion. Already, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has announced that Israel’s borders will be expanded and redrawn around the partition wall in 2010, jeopardizing what little hope remains for peace. Artists and activists around the world are putting a spotlight on the barrier to prevent this from taking place. Whether it be stencil drawings or a graffiti scrawl, their message is the same: “Tear this wall down!”
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Comments
50 years ago a solution was offered, and rejected by the Palestinians. So, what now?!! Maybe the English should come back?!!!! what now?
what hope? when countries that have been seen to be honest, like the UK can commit war crimes and come out unpunished by international law, the UN.
what hope? when countries like america can supply Israeli people with money to build on land that is not theirs, suppress a nation economically and politicly and kill innocent people without punishment. why do we still wonder why kids, in the UK in particular, don't believe in letting live. how much noise do we need to make to be heard?
thank you banksy. and thank you adbusters for posting this on your site.
There is hope. I'm sending my vibes.
Zionism is theft. Thanks for the art Banksy.
The Palestinians aren't unanimously pleased with Banksy's pieces, especially where they are portrayed as rats and donkeys.
I'm an artist and i can honestly say that art will not do a damn thing in this situation :/
is their a solution to this problem? hell yeah, but it comes with people talikng to each other. look up PEACE GROUPS IN ISRAEL AND PALESTINE. some army people on both sides have even started peace groups because they are sick of all the killing. You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty. Mahatma Gandhi
Well, I like them.
The wall is to stop Jews being killed by Palestinian terrorists, not to take land. Walls can be torn down, as was the Berlin Wall, dead people cannot be revived, at least not until the Messaih comes.
Art can make a difference in this situation if it does what all great protest art does. It has to inspire and mobilize the people. Real justice doesn't come from Peace Groups. It comes from people finally getting angry and inspired enough to stand up for justice. To be clear, I'm not talking about violence and retaliatory vengeance. I'm talking about a coherent, powerful nonviolent movement that cannot be ignored by citizens half a world away. Think Vietnam, apartheid, civil rights, Gandhi, etc. Until the people can build a movement, peace will not come from topdown means. This is a postmodern society we live in, in which image is all important. And right now, the Palestinian movement is viewed as fractured, fanatical, violent, and weak. This is what needs to change. And powerful art can spark that change.
We have a different war in the United States. Doctors focus on drugs to keep the sick coming back. No effort to cure diseases, but only to reat diseases. As a lifelong diabetic, I was scammed by the doctors and drug companies. I learned by accessing original diabetic research that insulin restores, bones, kidneys, thymus, the brain and sexual function. If diabetic researchers know this to be true, why don't the doctors inform diabetics that the only known effective treatment of diabetes is insulin? Scammed in Iowa
20 years after the fact, I started using insulin with 12 injections per day and returned my body to 100 percent normal health, and my bald head disappeared, had to get larger shoes and wonder if we will end up with a new baby thanks to the discovery in insulin by Canadians in 1921.
Yeah. Right. Tear this wall down. Let Hamas homicide bombers come to Israeli towns to blow kids in discoteques and pizza shops. What a pile of crap. Just say what you think you hate us and want to kill us, and nothing is new under the sun for 2000 years. Screw you, Bunksy. God help we'll meet sometime.
Forget what happened 50 years ago. In 2002, the entire arab world offered Israel full peace in return for full withdrawal to the '67 borders, as required by countless UN resolutions. Israel rejected the offer, and is instead continuing colonizing Palestinian land effectively aborting the birth of a viable Palestinian state. Israel could have peace today. It chooses colonization. It will never have both.
Mo is theft not a thought there! Thanks Zionism for providing a home for the Arab Jews persecuted in the name of Islam.
Mrs. Jenny Uechi and Adbusters: I really think that you are doing a very important and consistent job with your protests and activities against Globalization. I really do support this way of thinking and acting, and I wish that this world will become better and less corporation dominated as it is today. But when it comes to politics, especially in the delicate situation in the Middle East I think you should rather stay out of involvement. Your whole perception on this case isn't objective, and is pretty shallow, to be honest. Your opinions in general seem to be biased and lack of basic honesty and familiarity when it comes to Israel and it's tough situation. When you deal with politics which isn't got anything to do with your original goals Antiglobalization, environment etc., I think that you miss the point, and damaging your integrity. An Israeli Citizen.
First go youtube this: Combatants for Peace Israel/Palestine. Well ME, I feel what u are saying about art, but at the same time can you name me a peace of protest art that has changed the course of history? Anywho I dont have time to talk to you about some of the other stuff you talked about but just to sum up gandhi dont llose your faith in humanity, becouse its not all bad : ill talk to you about some of the other stuff you said in 2 to 3 days
Yeah, let's start building walls around the world to avoid seeing what we don't wanna see. USA is already doing this with Mexico.
Interesting how you describe it as a concrete and razor-wire wall In fact, 95% of it is fence which is easily moveable. And subject to be changed based on negotiations. But who needs facts eh?
The fairy tale is over. Obama's pixie dust is wearing off. A few in the corporate media are finally starting to reveal some details about this man's judgment. I speak of Obama's long association with his spiritual advisor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Obama says he didn't know Wright was far, far left. While that is hard to believe, it says that Obama is not a very discerning judge of character. And it shows poor judgment for a presidential candidate to allow such an extremist to serve on his campaign. Rev. Wright says AIDS was created by the US government to kill black people. Come on! I didn't know about that man, Rev. Wright. Is that what Obama is telling us?
While the critics of the Israeli lobby correctly point out the power, money and influence of the Israeli lobby they are on the wrong track. The Israeli lobby alone is not the main reason why we support and help to maintain the the theft of the land of the Palestinians via zionist terrorism. The main reason is racism.
The Palestinians are what the more honest racists among us refer to as sand n. The basically white East European Israelis are considered more valuable than the Palestinians by the white majority here in the United States.
The zionists used terrorism to establish the state of Israel. We ignored that indiscretion. But we are outraged that the Palestinians are using the same exact methods to establish their own state or to take back the land that was stolen from them.
For example, Benny Morris has documented 24 acts of terrorism committed by zionists in order to ethnically cleanse the then Palestinian majority between 1947 and 1949. Ami Isseroff points out how zionist terrorists like the Irgun and the Stern Gang murdered prisoners, women and children and old men who were noncombatants at Deir Yassin in 1948.
Indeed, the gigantic act of terrorism by Ariel Sharon in the 1980's at Sabra and Shatilla, slaughtering at least 700 Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children, did not appear to reduce the amont of cash we send to Israel every year. Sharon gave the order to allow the genocidal and vengeful Christian Phalangists into the Palestinian refugee camps. He knew what they were going to do. He knew what they were doing while they were doing it. He did not lift a finger to stop them. But he did make sure that Israeli soldiers would not allow any of the women and children to escape the slaughter.
So what then was the difference between Ariel Sharon, who George W. Bush described as a man of peace, and Yassir Arafat who we saw as an evil terrorist. I suspect Sharon had targeted and killed a lot more civilians than Arafat had. Surely they are both now in hell if there is a hell.
But most white Americans saw Sharon as a good guy and Arafat as an evil terrorist. This, of course, is because Sharon was white and Arafat was a man of color.
Whether we want to face it or not, most white Americans have a racial caste system imbedded within their collective subconscious.
I think most black Americans are aware of this caste system and how it effects America's support for Israel. Blacks understand it because they have been victimized by white American racism for 400 years. They have a lot of experience with it. I believe this is why polls may show that black support for Israel is nowhere near as strong as white support for Israel. In fact, I believe most blacks probably oppose our support for Israel while most whites support it.
The adroit and effective Israeli lobby merely manipulates this racism in the same way that Hitler manipulated antisemitism to rise to power in Germany.
And regarding the holocaust committed by the Nazis, it was indeed horrendous and is in no way a fabrication or an exaggeration. However, most Americans do not know that the Japanese probably killed more Chinese civilians with WMD and conventional weapons than the 12 million who were killed in the Nazi concentration camps. The Japanese targeted and slaughtered perhaps 20 million Chinese civilians. Maybe many more. But the West was not outraged about this Asian genocide. In fact, the West ignored it. America even used some of the Japanese scientists who made the chemical and biological weapons used against the Chinese.
Again, the difference between the two genocides was the color of the victims.
Likewise, the world did not make much of fuss and still doesn't regarding the genocide committed by the Turks against the Armenians. Again, because the Armenians are people of color.
All this exposes a very primitive and primal negative regarding human nature that none of us want to face up to. It is the strongest motivation behind most wars. We go to war and kill those we feel are not like us, not human or barely human, less human. Hence, the reason why the first Gulf War was popular and this one isn't is because the current one has put more white people into body bags than the first one.
It is time for humanity, especially white humans, to honestly look ourselves in the mirror.
personally i love the idea, and have thought of doing stuff like this myself, but people as a whole have become lazy, so to say. everyone has become so inundated with false media, so called religious beliefs, and their free will to shop that people have stopped caring. the only ones who care, obviously use certain methods such as this to really get the point across that, yeah this is bullshit, we need to open our eyes and do something. i just pray that people get the message before its too late, if not already.
Tear this site down.
I think everyone here needs to open their perspectives a little. I was born Jewish and converted to Islam. Similarly I was raised radically Kahane Zionist and now fight for the Palestinian cause. In all that time Ive realized something. To oppose Israel is not antisemitic but undoubtedly Antisemitism can fuel such opposition. This antisemitism denies the Jews of Europe the right to have sought a home anywhere after the holocaust. They had that right. I do however recognize the devastating cost of that rights current realization. Jews worked with the western powers and the Ottoman Empire. They did not forge their state in cooperation with the people already here. Instead many took up that hatred or apathy towards the humanity of the Palestinians that had for so long gone hand in hand with European antismitism and they expelled hundreds of thousands of people. The Palestinians have the right to resistance and in that train of thought suicide bombing needs to be seen as a secular act, unforgivable when it targets innocents but fueled by sociopolitical desperation. Hatred exists on both sides and a solution will not be readily found until both sides give up that hatred. Israel who holds the balance of power must take up the duty of leading the issue away from hatred.
Just one thing i would like to say, unrelated to the article: please people either use your proper name or one that is neutral, don't try to impersonate others in an attempt to validate your arguments.