The posturing over a problematic, peaceful panel
You may have heard about the furore surrounding a “problematic panel” on the exterior of the new Resettlement Centre in the Waikato, New Zealand.
Juliet Moses
The Centre has been developed by the Hamilton Multicultural Services (HMS) Trust, a charitable trust that aims to help successful settlement of refugees and migrants.
The Centre’s opening has now been delayed because of anti-Israel protestors’ objections to one of the panels.
According to the HMS Trust’s website:
“The Settlement Centre Waikato (SCW) is a place of unity and one which welcomes all people, regardless of their religious or political beliefs, ethnicity or country of origin.
A key feature of the redeveloped SCW are the ethnic panels that externally wrap the building like a cloak. They are a symbol of diversity, inclusion, unity and our shared humanity here in Kirikiriroa, Hamilton.
Each panel is designed by a local ethnic artist and represents a personal journey through art, showcasing aspects of one’s own unique heritage and culture.
The invitation to participate was open to the communities HMS Trust support which includes migrants and former refugees of ethnic backgrounds. Public engagement was undertaken in mid 2023. And following on from this we received submissions from community members who wanted to take part in the project.
The result of the creativity, hard work, and dedication over the course of a year, from a multitude of local ethnic artists, celebrates and showcases the diversity of Kirikiriroa, Hamilton.
This is an artistic celebration of cultural identity, which is made up of memories, traditions, and heritage bringing together the shared humanity of people who have made Aotearoa, New Zealand home.”
The protestors seem to be struggling with their justifications and messaging for their stance, and news reports variously ascribe the grounds for their objections, as follows:
- The panel is “Jewish”, and it should only be for ethnicities and nationalities
- The artist is Israeli, and this is “art-washing”
- The art features stolen images, like that of olive branches and doves
- The blue lines represent expansionist Israel
Even responding to these objections risks giving them legitimacy they do not warrant, but it is worth noting:
- The Jewish people are an ethno-religious group, who originate from the Levant over 3000 years ago. In 1979 in the one successful prosecution over “hate speech” in New Zealand, King-Ansell v Police, the Court of Appeal concluded that Jews have an ethnic origin which brought them within the relevant provision of the Race Relations Act 1971.
- The artist, as far as I am aware, does not represent nor is endorsed by the government of Israel, any more than any other artist who created a panel could be said to be representing a government.
- Olive branches and doves do not belong to any one nationality or ethnicity and, moreover, are well-known symbols of peace. Similarly, the pomegranate is a symbol of sanctity, fertility and abundance.
- The interpretation of the blue lines appears to be entirely fanciful and irreconcilable with the obvious messages noted above, but I note that “expansionist” Israel is one twelfth the size of New Zealand, the ratio of Arab to Jewish land is 640:1, and that Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 in the hopes of Gaza flourishing as a homeland for the Palestinian people.
However it is justified or explained, the end result is that the former Israeli, alone among all the artists, has been singled out for exclusion by protestors and her state of origin delegitimised.
Presumably, there are other ethnicities or cultures represented that other people could object to, were they to take the same dehumanising, malicious, and exclusionary approach as the protestors. Pakistanis might object to an Indian panel, or vice versa, just as with China and Tibet, Turkey and Greece, and so on. Other nationalities could be objected to for the human rights records of the states they are from. Israelis and Jews could also object to the inclusion of the Palestinian panel – and justify it on the basis that a 24 March poll shows that 71% of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank support the barbaric Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 and the Waikato’s most outspoken Palestinian Tameem Shaltoni certainly does – though I would hope they would not.
Of course, parsing the panels in this way is absurd and inconsistent with the vision that the HMS Trust has and what the panels were intended to depict – a celebration of diversity, inclusion, unity and shared humanity and, as the Trust’s chair said, “mutual respect and understanding that transcends religious beliefs, political beliefs, and borders.”
It is as absurd as an anonymous Kiwi artist having an artwork reflecting say, New Zealand’s landscape or diverse people, rejected in an overseas competition, because of New Zealand’s history of colonisation or the current Government’s environmental policies.
The protestors’ positioning will not advance peace, or save Palestinians, or help the people whom the Centre is intended to serve. What it will do, and what I would suggest gets us closer to the truth as to the real reason for the protest, can be found in the latest statement on the Palestine Waikato Facebook page:
Art is subjective and interpretations are shaped by life experiences.
However, this artwork distracts and detracts from the experiences of those who are not the artist and helps to normalise mass-murder, ethnic-cleansing, land theft, bombing of hospitals and schools, and many other violences we have witnessed over the past nine months.
Palestine Waikato Facebook page
It does not take an art expert to understand that the beautiful imagery symbolises peace, hope and prosperity, nor a psychologist to figure out that that is PRECISELY THE PROBLEM. If your main objective is demonising an entire people by treating them as a monolithic evil oppressor abstraction, rather than individuals with their own experiences, desires, views and values, this panel jeopardises that objective. The protestors do not want to protect the public from seeing – GASP – pomegranates, doves and olive branches; they want to protect the public, and their own fragile, delusional, simplistic worldview, from humanising an Israeli individual. THAT is verboten!
One could reasonably ask, if this image is not acceptable, what would be? And the answer of course is, as far as these protestors are concerned and however they dress it up, none, if it comes from an Israeli or someone of Israeli heritage. Israelis and anybody who supports or is connected to them (even those critical of the government and/or the war) are being increasingly hounded out of public life – as we saw with the (thankfully failed) attempt to deplatform Ziggy Marley at WOMAD earlier in the year.
I doubt I need to explain what the symbolism and practical effect would be of excluding one artist – the one who happens to hail from the world’s one tiny Jewish homeland (where almost half of the world’s approximately 15 million Jews live, along with other ethnicities and religions, including its 20% Arabs), or what the ignominious history is of censorship of the art of Jews.
Perhaps I do need to explain, however, because it does not seem to be well known, the many challenges that Jewish refugees faced in coming to New Zealand around World War 2, and that they were not, to put it mildly, warmly welcomed. Ann Beaglehole writes that “The small number who gained refuge in New Zealand before and after the war encountered prejudice and considerable suspicion of cultural differences.” And that is only the 1100 or so refugees who were lucky enough to be allowed in. An article in the Otago Daily Times on October 29 1938, entitled “The Plight of the Jews” detailed the efforts of my own great grandfather Rabbi Katz, of Wellington, to get the New Zealand government to respond urgently to the refugee crisis. Thousands of other Jews, desperate to escape the Nazis, were turned away. Walter Nash, who as Minister of Customs in the first Labour Government, had the discretion to allow immigrants in, wrote: “There is a major difficulty of absorbing these people in our cultural life without raising a feeling of antipathy to them”.
Despite that, Jewish people, who have come to New Zealand since the earliest days of Pakeha settlement, have been loyal and proud citizens and have been grateful for the opportunities afforded to them. They have contributed immensely to their new homeland, including to the arts. Hundertwasser and Marti Friedlander are perhaps two of the best known examples.
What is also instructive about this fiasco is what happens when – through cowardice or worse – leaders fail to lead and act according to their stated values. By delaying the opening of the Centre and not condemning or disagreeing with the protestors, the HMS Trust has given the impression that it countenances the protestors’ stance and has undermined its stated vision.
What it should have done when presented with the protestors’ farcical objections and demands is immediately and unequivocally state that a former Israeli artist’s work – let alone one that clearly has a message of peace, prosperity and hope – has as much right to be there as any other artist. What it should not have done is pander to a posse of posturing moral narcissists, and submit to their demands. Just as we are told by the protesters that “Art is subjective and interpretations are shaped by life experiences”, the Trust should have gone ahead with their opening, even if that risked a protest, and allowed the public to interpret what kind of people protest the opening of a centre that helps migrants and refugees, because a panel on it, one that contains an unmistakable message of peace, prosperity and hope, was designed by a former Israeli.
In 1943, my great-grandfather Rabbi Katz delivered a speech to the Wellington Jewish community on its centenary that included these words:
“So we meet today…in thanksgiving to God, who directed the footsteps of our fathers to these blessed shores, where they found a haven of peace—a land of freedom, justice, and opportunity, where barriers of race or religion do not exist.”
This is the mission of the HMS Trust, and the message of the problematic panel – one that the protestors would do well to reflect on and honour.
Juliet Moses is the president if the New Zealand Council
