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Larger-than-life Bushwick mural shows Israeli and Palestinian children embracing
(New York Jewish Week) – Amid Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, Israeli and Palestinian boys act as symbols of a peaceful future in a new, larger-than-life mural painted this week on the side of a loft building in Bushwick.
The Israeli boy, wearing a kippah and ritual fringes, and the Palestinian boy, who wears a keffiyeh — the black-and-white headscarf often signifying Palestinian nationalism — wrap their arms around each other as they walk off into the sunset underneath the words: “Love’s resilience can rebuild bridges that the war has burned.”
The mural was intended to channel a sense of hope, as well as to shift the prevailing narratives in Bushwick, according to Michelle Mayerson, who helped organize and commission the mural.
“With this particular piece, actually, I wanted to do something about the war,” Mayerson told the New York Jewish Week. “In Bushwick, there is a Free Palestine mural of Muslim woman holding a child and it’s beautiful, tugs at the soul. But it’s one-sided, and I just felt we should have some representation — and even this representation is really not pro-Israel at all. It’s just the fact that there’s a Jewish kid in Bushwick.”
Through her company Brooklyn Street Art, Mayerson serves as a liaison between street and graffiti artists and the real estate companies or landlords who own Brooklyn’s buildings. In some of her work, the building owners approach her about finding an artist to beautify the sides of their property. Other times, the artists approach her with an idea, and she gets a building on board for them to make it into a reality.
In the case of this mural, it was neither. In the wake of the Oct. 7 attack, Mayerson had already been thinking about what a mural made in response might look like, but found it difficult to convince both artists and building owners of her vision.
“I was trying so hard to be sensitive to everyone. I only wanted to promote love and peace,” Mayerson said. “In Bushwick and in street art in general, people love to push the limits. But with this particular issue, when the idea was hatched, most artists didn’t even want to paint anything even remotely near it,” she added.
But when her friend, a Chilean street artist and muralist who goes by the name De Grupo, reached out to offer condolences and support, everything began falling into place. “I also wanted to get a mural together about the war,” De Grupo recalled.
Now all Mayerson had to do was find the right building. Most of her work is in Bushwick, the epicenter of contemporary street art and murals in New York City.
“I called every contact I had. No one wanted to give me a wall to put anything on there that was controversial,” said Mayerson, who is Jewish. She said Jewish realtors and landlords she spoke to were especially worried about vandalism and about upsetting their tenants.
Eventually, Mayerson managed to secure 40 feet of wall on the side of 49 Wyckoff Avenue, a popular canvas for street artists that often commissions art as well as advertising. Mayerson then went on to fundraise for supplies, lifts and compensation for the artists.
“The way this came together felt like the hand of God,” she said.
Mayerson, De Grupo and a third artist named Manuel Alejandro started designing what the little boys would wear. “Little boys would be wearing jerseys and in the Middle East, what’s the biggest sport? Soccer,” Mayerson said. “So we were thinking, ‘Let’s do a little cheeky little rivalry between Ronaldo and Messi.”
The group decided that the Palestinian boy would wear the blue and maroon jersey of the Portuguese player Cristiano Ronaldo and the Israeli boy would wear the light blue jersey of longtime Argentina star Lionel Messi, both because they are two of the most recognizable players on Earth and also because each player is popular in those respective regions, as Ronaldo currently plays for Saudi Arabia and Messi has visited Israel.
It wasn’t until the drawing was completed that Mayerson and the artists noticed the combination of the players’ jersey numbers spelled out 10/7, the day of the Hamas attack that left about 1,200 Israelis dead and the beginning of the war.
“That was just a bonus. It didn’t dawn on anybody until we finished the draft,” she said. “We didn’t plan it. It wasn’t something that we had discussed. It was just there. It was a sign of God.”
They also had one of the boys holding a beaten-up teddy bear as a sign of “what they have gone through,” Mayerson said, but they are “still pulling their little toy together and walking towards the sunset.”
“I’m very happy with the idea and the way everybody came together,” De Grupo said.
The image is reminiscent of a famous photograph taken shortly after the 1993 Oslo Accords appearing to show a Palestinian boy and an Israeli boy with their arms around each other’s shoulders that became a symbol of the era’s hope for peace. The photograph has endured and even circulated since Oct. 7 as a vision of an alternate present, one in which there can be peace — even though it was revealed a decade ago to have been staged: Both boys were Jewish.
Whether the new picture lasts as long remains to be seen. Once the group secured a spot to work and funding, they painted the mural over just four days on the weekend of New Year’s Eve. It will be up, Mayerson said, until the building secures its next advertising partnership.
Mayerson said that the mural received both positive and negative feedback when she posted it on her social media page — and she decided to delete the negative comments.
“I didn’t want it to take away from the message and from people looking at it and just seeing something that really is a beautiful picture,” she explained. “What could be bad about two boys from two different cultures and religions just playing together?”
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The post Larger-than-life Bushwick mural shows Israeli and Palestinian children embracing appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Incoming US Senate Majority Leader Threatens ICC With Sanctions Over Arrest Warrant for Netanyahu
An exterior view of the International Criminal Court in the Hague, Netherlands, March 31, 2021. Photo: REUTERS/Piroschka van de Wouw
Incoming US Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) has threatened to push legislation imposing sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC) if it does not halt its efforts to pursue arrest warrants against Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Thune, who was picked last week to be the next Senate majority leader once the Republicans take control of the legislative chamber in January, wrote Sunday on X/Twitter that he will make it a “top priority” to punish the ICC if it refuses to walk back its arrest warrant application issued against Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. The US lawmaker also indicated he would take action if Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the current Senate majority leader, does not do so against the intergovernmental organization.
“If the ICC and its prosecutor do not reverse their outrageous and unlawful actions to pursue arrest warrants against Israeli officials, the Senate should immediately pass sanctions legislation, as the House has already done on a bipartisan basis,” he wrote. “If Majority Leader Schumer does not act, the Senate Republican majority will stand with our key ally Israel and make this — and other supportive legislation ‚ a top priority in the next Congress.”
In May, the ICC chief prosecutor officially requested arrest warrants for the Israeli premier, Gallant, and three Hamas terrorist leaders — Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Al-Masri, and Ismail Haniyeh — accusing all five men of “bearing criminal responsibility” for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Israel or the Gaza Strip. The three Hamas leaders have since been killed, and Gallant was recently fired as Israel’s defense minister.
US and Israeli officials subsequently issued blistering condemnations of the ICC move, decrying the court for drawing a moral equivalence between Israel’s democratically elected leaders and the heads of Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group that launched the ongoing war in Gaza with its massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7.
ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan has come under fire for making his surprise demand for arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant on the same day in May that he suddenly canceled a long-planned visit to both Gaza and Israel to collect evidence of alleged war crimes. The last-second cancellation infuriated US and British leaders, according to Reuters, which reported that the trip would have offered Israeli leaders a first opportunity to present their position and outline any action they were taking to respond to the war crime allegations.
Thune’s Republican colleagues praised his threat to the ICC, suggesting that the Senate should target the international organization.
“Well done Senator Thune. The ICC’s actions against Israel have been outrageous, and an independent review into the prosecutor’s actions is more than called for,” wrote Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). :The Senate should take up the ICC sanctions bill that passed the House in a bipartisan manner. Standing up for Israel today protects America tomorrow.”
“The Senate must immediately pass legislation to sanction the International Criminal Court,” stated Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY.), chair of the Senate Republican Conference. “Senate Republicans stands with Israel.”
“The Senate Foreign Relations Committee can and should act ASAP to pass ICC sanctions legislation. We waited for months for the majority to schedule the vote only to have them postpone it before the election. We will not fail to act when Republicans are in the majority,” wrote Sen. John Risch (R-ID), the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) wrote that the Senate “should immediately consider the bipartisan legislation passed by the House to sanction the ICC.”
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) added that Thune is “right” and that “Chuck Schumer should do his job” by advancing legislation to sanction the ICC.
The US has said it does not recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction and rejects the implied equivalence drawn between Israel and Hamas.
The post Incoming US Senate Majority Leader Threatens ICC With Sanctions Over Arrest Warrant for Netanyahu first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Concordia closes its Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, citing ‘budgetary constraints’
It was announced quietly, wit a small, two-paragraph notice replacing the web page for Concordia University’s Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (MIGS), along with an unrelated stock […]
The post Concordia closes its Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, citing ‘budgetary constraints’ appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Jamaal Bowman Continues Diatribes Against Israel, AIPAC; Expresses Pride in Not Condemning Oct. 7 Massacre
US Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) speaks during the National Action Network National Convention in New York City, US, April 7, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
In his final weeks as a US federal lawmaker, Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) has continued his persistent condemnation of Israel, accusing the Jewish state of perpetrating “apartheid” against Palestinians, expressing pride in not supporting a resolution condemning Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7, and arguing against the funding of Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system.
During a newly released interview with left-wing pundit Rania Khalek, Bowman reflected on his unsuccessful reelection bid earlier this year. The lawmaker blamed the “pro-Israel lobby” for his loss in the Democratic primary, claiming that his outspokenness about the ongoing Israel-Hamas war made him a target for “Zionists.”
Bowman, one of the staunchest critics of Israel in the US Congress, argued that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a prominent pro-Israel lobbying group, overwhelmed his campaign by spending roughly $15 million to aid his opponent, Westchester County Executive George Latimer. He added that his constituents were stunned that a “special interest” group such as AIPAC “can remove a congressman” by submerging a primary race in a torrent of money.
“Now the world has seen AIPAC for who they are,” Bowman stated.
The stated mission of AIPAC is to seek bipartisan support to strengthen the US-Israel relationship.
Bowman admitted that he did not know much about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict when he initially ran for office, opting to parrot talking points such as Israel “has a right to exist” and a “right to defend itself.”
Bowman said that his opinion on Israel was transformed after he visited the country on a trip sponsored by J Street, a progressive Zionist organization that recently called for the US to impose an arms embargo against the Jewish state. The left-wing firebrand said that the trip — which consisted of a series of discussions with peace activists, scholars, and former Israel Defense Force (IDF) officers — soured his view of the Jewish state, comparing the security checkpoints and barrier wall that separate Israel and the West Bank to protect against terrorism with the Jim Crow laws in the US south segregating black Americans.
Khalek asked Bomwan if his view on Iron Dome has shifted, citing that the missile interception system “shields Israel from the consequences for bombing all of its neighbors, for constantly stealing land.”
The congressman claimed that his view on Israel’s air defense system has changed, arguing that it represents “a weapon to use and continue apartheid, oppression, open-air prison, occupation, and now the genocide” of Palestinians. He said that he regrets voting in favor of Iron Dome funding, and that the missile defense system should only be replenished if the Palestinians are given a fully-funded army on Israel’s borders.
Bowman also criticized a congressional resolution condemning the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7, suggesting that AIPAC authored the document. He dismissed the notion that the mass murder, rape, and kidnapping of Israelis on Oct. 7 was “unprovoked,” claiming that Israel initiated the aggression by enacting “apartheid” on Palestinians. He then lambasted American governors, senators, and President Joe Biden for immediately showing empathy to Israelis, saying that legislators were being “dishonest” and not having a “full conversation” about the Jewish state.
In the year following the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, Bowman intensified his rhetoric against Israel and pro-Israel organizations. Over the summer, he condemned AIPAC as a “Zionist regime.” In a desperate attempt to salvage his ill-fated primary effort, he promise the Democratic Socialists of America — a prominent far-left organization that has made anti-Israel activism a top priority — that he would vote against future Iron Dome funding in exchange for financial backing of his campaign. Bowman infamously dismissed the widely reported and corroborated allegations of Hamas terrorists raping Israeli women during the Oct. 7 onslaught as “propaganda” before being forced to walk back his remarks.
In June, Latimer cruised to a commanding victory over Bowman, winning by a margin of 58 percent to 41 percent.
The post Jamaal Bowman Continues Diatribes Against Israel, AIPAC; Expresses Pride in Not Condemning Oct. 7 Massacre first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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