Art exhibit at city hall spurs censorship debate
The Palestinian General Delegation in Ottawa has released a statement saying it “condemns Israel’s assault on Canadian free speech” after Israel’s ambassador to Canada criticized an art exhibit at Ottawa City Hall Friday.
According to the statement, which also accuses Israel of widespread ill-treatment of Palestinian prisoners, the delegation is “unsurprised” that the Israeli ambassador would “stoop to the level of interfering in a local exhibit,” adding that the delegation encourages people to see the exhibit before judging it.
The statement also said the delegation applauds the “brave decision by City Hall to reject Israeli censorship and uphold Canada’s free speech laws.”
Israel’s ambassador Rafael Barak said Friday the exhibit, which includes images of Palestinian prisoners behind bars, is “glorifying terror.”
The ambassador’s statement came one day after his meeting with Mayor Jim Watson to discuss his concerns about the exhibit. Controversy around the display has caused the city to review how art is selected for the Karsh-Masson Art Gallery by an independent panel and to start posting public notices saying the work doesn’t reflect the municipal government’s views.
A statement from the Israeli embassy on Friday listed seven people whose images appear in the exhibit, saying they’re “just a handful of the suicide bombers, masterminds of massacres, terrorist operatives and hijackers glorified in the exhibit” but not being presented as such.
Barak said a description of “artists, activists, writers and leaders” in the exhibit’s brochure is misleading.
“This is not an exhibition that is very candid, you know, reflecting the freedom fighters or the Palestinian narrative,” Barak said in an interview. “It’s something that hides here a message that is very difficult for me, as Israeli ambassador, to accept. It’s a message that is glorifying terrorism.”
Palestine-born Canadian artist Rehab Nazzal maintains her work, titled Invisible, does no such thing. She said the embassy cited the images out of context, since they are in one film within an exhibit that contains about 1,700 images.
Nazzal said she included images of those people because they’re part of the “collective memory” of Palestine. “It’s not about glorifying terror, definitely not,” said Nazzal, who is now based in Toronto.
There are no plans to take down the exhibit before its scheduled end on June 22. The mayor outlined the city’s response in a three-page letter sent on Friday to the Jewish Federation of Ottawa, which has called for the exhibit’s removal.
Watson, who closed his letter by saying he denounces terrorism and political violence, wrote that in more than 20 years of hosting independently-juried exhibits, the city has never shut one down. Cancelling it, in the opinion of legal staff, would likely violate freedom of expression rights, Watson said.