The Guardian 26 January, 2005
Exhibition hounded
by anti-Palestine lobby
Bob Briton
A multimedia display currently featured at the South Australian Museum is again at the centre of controversy that has followed the exhibition for over two years. Treasures of Palestine contains material from the private collection of the head of the General Palestinian Delegation in Australia, Mr Ali Kazak, and has drawn fire from powerful lobbies supporting Israel's military aggression against the Palestinians.
The exhibition includes a wide range of exquisite handcrafted items: costumes, mother-of-pearl inlay work, olive wood sculptures and ceramics. On their own these pieces challenge the carefully nurtured misconception that a modern Palestinian state has no historical roots or justification. "This exhibition confirms that in the 19th century Palestine had an advanced society with a highly-developed arts industry, cities and towns", as Paul Heywood-Smith of the Australian Friends of Palestine Association noted in The Advertiser last week.
Furthermore, the handicrafts undermine the stereotypes of Palestinian society to show its remarkable diversity. The most obvious indication of this fact is that a significant portion of the work is on Christian themes.
The exhibition also contains maps, coins and banknotes that trace the history of the Palestinians and their frustrated yearning for an independent homeland. Most controversially, it uses photographs, posters and documentary videos to portray their struggle. It is not possible to remain unmoved by these images of ugly refugee camps, houses being demolished, youths being beaten by Israeli soldiers and grieving families.
When the exhibition was mounted at the Canberra Museum and Gallery in 2003, director Peter Haynes rejected a request from the Israeli embassy to remove a number of the items. Later that year, when it moved to Sydney's Powerhouse Museum, some exhibits — including 44 photographs, political posters and two documentary films on the Intifada- were not displayed.
The official reason finally given by museum management was that there was not enough room at the centre for the entire exhibition. However, the decisions regarding what was "in" and what was "out" were entirely in their hands after Mr Kazak was obliged to sign those rights over to Powerhouse management. NSW Arts Ministry director-general Roger Wilkins later told an estimates committee meeting that the museum's trustees "decided that they were not going to become a political football in what is a very difficult and vexed issue".
Management conceded that it consulted the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies before the opening of the exhibition. The opinion of the Australian Arabic Communities Council was not sought. The whole controversy over the exhibition had followed hard on the heals of the attacks on the organisers of the Sydney Peace Prize for giving their award to Palestinian academic Dr Hanan Ashrawi and confirmed the existence of a campaign to prevent the opinions of the Palestinians from being heard.
So, when Treasures of Palestine opened at the South Australian Museum last month, it was to be expected that supporters of the Israeli government's expansionism and intolerance would make their views known. The daily Advertiser carried a stream of letters from detractors of the exhibition and, it must be pointed out, a string of measured responses. With only days remaining until the close of the exhibition, the president of SA's Jewish Community Council, Norman Schueler, was quoted in the Murdoch press claiming that Treasures contains "dishonest and tendentious material" that is "calculated to incite anti-Israeli hatred and, by extension, anti-Semitism".
Museum general manager Steve Riley was forced to defend his institution from an accusation by Mr Schueler that the museum was courting controversy and "rorting the public … to get people through the door". Mr Riley insisted that the positive feedback from the exhibition easily balanced out the negative comments. "Positive feedback includes that it has an interesting facet on the other side of the story of conflict in the Middle East and that it is great to see the Palestinians having a voice", he observed.
Ali Kazak told The Guardian that he was dismayed at the constant attempts over the years on the part of extremist community leaders to "prevent the public from seeing the photos of the war crimes and aggression that the media does not allow them to see".
Nevertheless, he notes with satisfaction that public interest and support has won out against a number of these attempts to censor this depiction of his people's struggle.
Treasures of Palestine will be on display at the SA Museum on Nth Terrace, Adelaide
until January 30. Opening hours are 10am to 4pm. Entry is free.