US university pulls Palestinian art
Officials at a US university have removed artwork depicting injured Palestinian children from an exhibit after complaints, a US newspaper reported.
The paintings were on display at Brandeis University in Boston, Massachusetts.
They were painted by Palestinian children at the request of an Israeli Jewish student at the Jewish-sponsored college who wanted to bring the Palestinian viewpoint to campus.
However, school officials said the paintings were too one-sided and they were removed on Saturday, four days into a two-week exhibit at a school library, the newspaper reported.
Lior Halperin, the student who organised the exhibit, called the school’s action “outrageous”.
“This [is] an educational institution that is supposed to promote debate and dialogue,” Halperin told The Globe.
“Let’s talk about what it is: Twelve-year-olds from a Palestinian refugee camp. Obviously it’s not going to be about flowers and balloons.”
The images include a bulldozer threatening a girl and a boy with an amputated leg on a crutch.
‘One-sided’
Halperin had contacted a friend who works in a Bethlehem refugee camp and asked children to paint images of Palestinian life.
Brandeis was founded in 1948 and is the only non-sectarian Jewish-sponsored college in the US. Half of its students are Jewish.
School officials said that several complaints were made.
“It was completely from one side [of] the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and we can only go based on the complaints we received,” Dennis Nealon, a spokesman for Brandeis said, according to The Globe.
Nealon said the school would consider displaying the artwork again in the fall, if it is alongside pieces showing the Israeli point of view.