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Beauty and Horror in the
"Minor Theater": Adham Center Hosts Palestine Solidarity Events
As its contribution to
AUC's "Year of Palestine," the Adham Center sponsored three events on February
3, 2003.
Centerpiece was the Sony
Gallery's exhibition of the photographs of veteran freelance photographer John
Tordai, entitled "Palestine: Women and Children First." Tordai's photographs,
most of them taken in the Gaza Strip, are less a direct indictment of the Israeli
occupation-though, as the photograph of a woman whose head was seared by acid
thrown by settlers shows, he does not flinch from that-than a celebration of the
irrepressible though tortured reality of a people who are not supposed to exist:
women smiling as they harvest wheat beneath a lowering sky near Deir El Balah,
a dress maker's daughter surprised trying on a bridal dress in Gaza City, a boy
at Breij Camp gazing quizzically at Palestinians soldiers, a youth gazing at his
own future as a new grave waits to be filled at the Martyrs' Cemetery.
As Graham Usher, writing
in the exhibition catalog, puts it, "Gathered in this exhibition is the iconography
of a people called Palestine, particularly as seen through he eyes of its women
and children." Usher has teamed with Tordai in their 2001 book A People Called
Palestine (Dewi Lewis Publishing).
The exhibition was inaugurated
by Dr. Ferial Ghazoul, Professor of English and Comparative Literature and editor
of Alif: A Journal of Comparative Poetics, and Dr. Nicholas Hopkins, Dean of the
School of Humanities. Ghazoul updated guests on the activities of the Faculty
for Palestine Committee, which since its foundation in September 2002, has sponsored
talks by internationals returning from Palestine, set up a scholarship fund for
Bir Zeit University, and organized the collection and dispatch of hundreds of
tons of food and medicines from the university. Hopkins noted that the photographs
were a "powerful human, as well as political, statement" and thanked the photographer
for showing something of the beauty, as well as the horror, of Palestine and its
people.
Tordai himself, who spoke
to students on the morning of the exhibition on "Photojournalism in the Palestinian-Israeli
Conflict," explored the dilemmas of photojournalism. Both Robert Capa and Eugene
Smith for whom the profession's two most prestigious awards are named, cheated.
Some critics have suggested that the photo of a soldier catching a bullet in the
Spanish Civil War may have been staged; this did not prevent it from becoming
an icon that influenced the way people saw that war in the way that Capa wanted.
In Palestine, and with digital and other technologies, the temptations are greater
and the chance of discovery less. Tordai uses more conventional techniques and,
as he said, "For every photo in the exhibition, there is a contact sheet."
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The program finished with
Graham Usher's lecture, "At a Crossroads: the Intifadat al Aqsa Two Years On,"
in the evening, following the inauguration of the exhibition, to a capacity audience
in the Blue Room. In his lucid and thought-provoking presentation, Usher, well
known in the region for his reporting from Palestine, carried by, among others,
Al Ahram Weekly and The Economist, concentrated on three issues: the crisis in
the Palestinian leadership, the devastating political cost of the suicide bombings,
and the need for democracy in Palestine. The Palestinian leadership, according
to Usher, is now composed of three streams: the old guard, led by Abu Mazen, which
seeks to end the Intifada by any means in order to re-open negotiations with the
Israeli; Fatah's younger field-based (Tanzim) activists, symbolized by Marwan
El Barghouti, which will only quit fighting when the Israelis are willing to negotiate
for a two-state solution within pre-1967 borders with East Jerusalem as the capital
of Palestine; and the Islamist movement, Hamas, which in theory will only quit
when all of historic Palestine is liberated, but might declare a truce on pragmatic
grounds in the event of a two-state solution. Until the impasse among these three
tendencies is resolved, the Palestinian leadership will lack legitimacy and a
mandate, stumbling into appalling traps. Usher described the decision by the Tanzim
to endorse suicide bombings as one of its worst decisions, since it both cost
the mainstream Palestinian leadership its credibility and played directly into
Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon's hands. As a way out of the impasse, Usher
suggested that Palestine should reject the conventional wisdom of liberation struggles,
that independence must precede democracy. In order for this to happen, Usher said,
Israel must be pressured into a complete withdrawal to allow for the peaceful
establishment of a new leadership with legitimacy. Asked by an audience member
what he thought was needed in order to make the United States take this and other
positive steps, he noted the words of the U.S. diplomat who told him, "Until the
region goes up in flames, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will remain minor theater."
"Palestine: Women and
Children First" is not the Sony Gallery's first exhibition on Palestine or the
Intifada. Osama Silwadi's exhibition "Intifadat al Aqsa" may be viewed at www.kpd-online.info's
Virtual Gallery, as may "Lehnert and Landrock in Palestine 1924-1930." Thomas
Hartwell and Enric Marti's "Peace That Kills: Gaza, October 2000" showed February
to March 2001.
By
Humphrey Davies
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