SF ART GALLERY NIXES ZIONISM

Just another example of the sustained attack on everything which is good and right in the modern world. And of the hatefilled anti-Semitic attitudes which have infected the discourse.


Catalogue of Contention

According to an article in Oy Bay, the Himmelberger Art Gallery in San Francisco cancelled a catalogue because of the Zionist agenda in the publication title, plus the Zionist content of some of the highlighted paintings, as well as the essays which were to be included in the catalogue.

Apparently the word 'zionist' and its attendant weltanschauung are icky.


See here:
http://oybay.wordpress.com/2007/10/16/the-zionist-5/



Reaction to the cancellation

In response, the five authors who were to have been featured in the catalogue have issued the following statement:


Zionism is the Civil Rights Movement of the Jewish People. It is the answered prayer to 2,000 years of ceaseless persecution at the hands of unpredictable host nations, and of religions that at times abandoned their own highest moral precepts in the pursuit of dubious political objectives - at the expense of Jewish life-and-limb. For an individual or institution to claim to respect and tolerate Jews, and yet deny a Jew, any Jew, the right to proclaim Zionism as a personal, spiritual, cultural and political raison d’etre, is like telling a black person that you regard him as your equal and friend but please, do not mention the March on Birmingham. Please don’t talk about Martin Luther King, Jr. Please don’t bring up Rosa Parks to me.
Zionism is the March on Birmingham, the Martin Luther King, Jr., the Rosa Parks of our people, the Jewish People. It is our march on the death camp at Auschwitz. It is our fight for an equal place on the bus of human history.

And the State of Israel is our promised land of freedom and equality on Earth. How the term Zionism - and all that it so powerfully represents to our people after the Holocaust - how this term Zionism - this vision of redemption, this philosophy of empowerment, this bright candle held up to the night and which lead back home the displaced and tortured remnants, the dreamers and idealists, the Jews who came from all corners of the earth with a vision of self-determination and cultural, spiritual and political renewal - how this miracle of an idea was brought to fruition through the sacrifice and struggle of the brave Israeli people, is one of the great miracles of human history.

And how this same Zionism - distorted and vilified by one of the most sordid disinformation campaigns in history - became the bete noire of the present-day, a refugee of a word, a pariah of an idea, is one of the most sordid instances in the long, cruel campaign to marginalize and, ultimately, to destroy the Jewish People.

Let us, then, be perfectly frank about one thing. To vilify, marginalize, suppress or outlaw Zionism politically, socially or culturally - for any reason whatever - is to wish no less then murderous extinction upon every Jewish man, woman and child in the world today. It is to refute our history entire; to deny us the memory of our long march out of bondage into equality and dignity. It is to assert ghettoization and ostracization, exile and massacre, as the only fate befitting a Jew.

If ignorance of the law does not exempt one from the law, then ignorance of the unthinkable consequences to Jews of a world without Israel - and of one’s own action to libel, marginalize or censor Zionism in any way, regardless of how subtle or seemingly innocuous - does not exempt anyone, then, from the charge of participation in fostering genocide against the Jewish People. For no less then genocide awaits our people should the present campaign against Zionism succeed.

We, the undersigned, affirm our right - moral, spiritual, cultural and political - to proclaim our Zionism in any manner that we choose, without hindrance or proscription. And further, we condemn - forcefully and completely - the stance of anti-Zionism for what so blatantly it is: a human rights violation and euphemistic mask behind which lurks the age-old nightmare of anti-Semitism.


-----"THE ZIONIST FIVE"
[Alan Kaufman, David Twersky, David Rosenberg, Etgar Keret, Polly Zavadivker]



This blogger applauds their point of view wholeheartedly.
And encourages readers to widely disseminate the statement above.

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If you wish to understand the Gallery's point of view, you may inquire at:
http://www.himmelbergergallery.com/
Address: 445A Sutter Street (between Powell and Stockton Streets), San Francisco, CA 94108.
Telephone: 415-391-8383.

Mr. David Himmelberger will probably be glad to enlighten you.


Apparently his objection to Zionist content has something to do with international understanding. Plus a distaste of some sort for nationalism and religion. Which may be inchoate, and might not be fully framed. In his circles.

This blogger has not yet inquired, though. I'm still too pissed to be polite to one of my fellow San Franciscans. Or the people who might agree with him.