Learn about the history of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, equality and justice by exploring major events in the history of their oppression on this day of the year.
2 April
ISRAELI ARMY BANS SOME COLOURS IN PALESTINIAN PAINTINGS
On this day in 2002, Israeli soldiers smashed up the Sakakini Cultural Centre in Ramallah. Artist Vera Tamari told Scottish writer William Dalrymple how “several of us were imprisoned on charges of painting in the colours of the Palestinian flag. They would say, 'You can paint, but don't use red, white or black,' and they would imprison you if you used those colours. You couldn't paint a poppy, for example, or a watermelon: they were the wrong colours. Often it was up to the artistic judgment of the officer in charge."
الجيش الاسرائيلي يمنع استخدام بعض الألوان في اللوحات الفنية الفلسطينية
2 أبريل
في مثل هذا اليوم من عام 2002 حطم جنود الاحتلال مركز السكاكيني الثقافي في رام الله. أخبرت الفنانة فيرا تعمري الكاتب الاسكتلندي ويليام دالريمبل كيف "سجن العديد منا بتهمة الرسم بألوان العلم الفلسطيني. كانوا يقولون ، "يمكنك أن ترسم ، لكن لا تستخدم الأحمر أو الأبيض أو الأسود" ، وسيسجنونك إذا استخدمت تلك الألوان. لا يمكنك طلاء الخشخاش ، على سبيل المثال ، أو البطيخ: لقد كانت الألوان خاطئة. في كثير من الأحيان كان الأمر متروكًا للحكم الفني للضابط المسؤول ".
Report by Scottish art historian William Dalrymple:
"The first time the Israeli army paid us a visit was at Easter," says Adila Laidi, the chic, French-educated 36-year-old who founded and runs the Sakakini cultural centre in central Ramallah. "Voilà! They broke in and trashed the place. Though peut-être we should be grateful they didn't actually blow it up..."
"The previous day, on a visit to Bethlehem, I had seen a similar arts centre run by the Lutheran Church. The pastor had taken me around, showing how Israeli troops had completely smashed up the new $2m Lutheran centre, blowing up workshops, smashing windows and fax machines, shooting up photocopiers, and bringing down ceilings with explosive charges in an oddly pointless bout of thuggery that caused over half a million dollars' worth of damage. Compared to that, the Sakakini got off lightly, with permanent damage only to doors and computers."
Israel’s war on Palestinian culture
A lesser known part of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine — the attempted annihilation of the Palestinian nation through cultural theft and destruction.
In “Overdue Books: Returning Palestine’s ‘Abandoned Property’ of 1948,” Mermelstein focuses her discussion on Hebrew University’s Jewish National and University Library, where tens of thousands of books looted from private Palestinian libraries are stored — thousands of them marked with the label “AP” for “absentee property.
Israel targets Palestinian cultural sites to undermine national identity
"This was not the first time this year, Israel bombed a Palestinian cultural facility. In July, Israel hit the Arts and Crafts Village, established in 1998 by the Gaza city council, which housed not only handicrafts but also Palestinian historical artefacts. Constructed from red clay and incorporating traditional rural design features, the village, sited at the centre of Gaza city, had four “houses", one each for brass, wood, embroidery, and carpets and an exhibition hall. It had been renovated shortly before the Israeli strike which killed two children in an adjacent park, damaged nearby buildings and destroyed a centre for disabled children. The day after the Israeli attack, Palestinian artists displayed their work in the rubble."
The barbarians are at the gates, reports Mamoon Al Abbassi in the Arab weekly
The Israeli government is pushing for legislation that would cut funding for works of art deemed not “loyal” to the state, reportedly aimed at Israeli citizens of Palestinian origin, but the move was met with concern by the country’s liberals. The measure, put forward by Israeli Culture and Sports Minister Miri Regev, proposes to authorise the finance and culture ministries to withdraw funding from art projects that question the official narrative of the country’s founding and Jewishness.
4-minute video of Israeli police ejecting the 2009 Palestinian Literature Festival in Jerusalem from the Palestine National Theatre.