Israeli exhibit questioned

peter_j

UK based group, Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine (APJP) , has called for Israel's exhibit at the Venice architecture biennale to be removed.

"We request that the Biennale committee consider withdrawing the Israeli entry as being provocative and counterproductive to the aims of the Biennale, and particularly distasteful in the context of the aftermath of an ugly and unnecessary war in neighboring Lebanon, and a continuing one-sided war in Gaza."

Many other architects, including Lord Richard Rogers, have denounced the call for a ban. Rogers left the organisation in March this year.

JERUSALEM POST 09.09.06
APJP

Anonymous

Petition: 10th international architecture biennale Venice

Note: This petion has been organised and written by our colleagues from Architects & Planners for Justice in Palestine www.apjp.org and it is reproduced with their permission.
Please click here to add your names to our petition.

PETITION TO THE ORGANIZERS10th INTERNATIONAL ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE VENICE - SEPTEMBER 2006

We are writing to express our dismay and concern that the Venice Biennale has agreed to host the Israeli contribution to the exhibition on the Architecture of Commemoration.
The whole contribution, funded by the Israeli Government, totally excludes the Palestinians who are the target and real victims of the seemingly unending series of wars being memorialised, and awards Israel the sole position of victim and victor. The contributor Dan Daor says that the message of memorial structures is that "there are no heroes - all there is, is the eternity of Israel, all of the country is on the front, and all of us are victims." (...)

Read this petion: here

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beatriz

CHARLES JENCKS TALKS ON THE ISRAELI PAVILION
"We have to stand up for architectural freedom" and we should not compromise says Charles Jencks, referring to the one sided view of destruction displayed by the Israeli Pavilion.

According to Jencks inadvertently the Israeli architects in the exhibition, are an extension of their own military forces. They have denied the right of memorialisation of the Palestinian people, “this situation is not acceptable… we cannot condoned this complicity” and architects should not be an extension of their military forces.

There are no memorials in Israel to the Naqba, the Palestinian tragedy of displacement and dispossession, where the intention of transfer and exclusion led to the destruction and elimination of 580 Palestinian villages towns and cities. Even today, this dispossession and humiliation goes on in Gaza and the West Bank, with the destruction of their heritage in the historic cities of Jerusalem, Nablus, Hebron, Bethlehem and Jericho. This is particularly ironic when the subject of the Biennale is the celebration of cities.
Source: F.A.S.T. http://www.seamless-israel.org/news.htm

Listen to Charles Jencks (Venice superblog) here
For the APJP petition to the Venice organizers here

Anonymous

Disgusting to see how the hackles are so quickly raised by sections of the Jewish community (and the infamous anti-defamation league) when theres any talk of support of palestine or any hint of anti Israeli sentiment.

Its bordering on a suppression of free speech and freedom of opinion.