Gideon Polya, “Zionism, Occupation, Palestinian Genocide. “Jerusalem Madonna”. Mother & Child”, MWC News, 7 October 2007.
For an image of the huge painting “Jerusalem Madonna” (1.3 x 2.9 metres) see: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gideonpolya/3428568005/in/set-72157616584873236/ .
Zionism, Occupation, Palestinian Genocide. “Jerusalem Madonna”. Mother & Child
Jerusalem (al-Quds) is one of the most sacred cities in the world. It is sacred to 2.0 billion Christians, 1.5 billion Muslims, 0.3 billion Arab Semites and to 15 million Jews (of whom most are essentially non-religious or strictly non-observant and only about 1 million are strictly observant adherents to Orthodox Judaism that rejects and opposes Zionism). Jerusalem has been home for about 1,900 years to non-Jewish Palestinians. Jerusalem was only ever ruled by Jews for several centuries in the last 3,000 years after they had totally exterminated the Indigenous Inhabitants in about 1000 BC (about 1,000-586 BC and 165-63 BC). Al-Quds (Jerusalem) has been the third most sacred site for about 1,400 years to Muslims throughout the World.
Yet this city is illegally in the hands of the Nazi-style Racist Zionists running Apartheid Israel who are engaged in a slow Palestinian Genocide involving expulsion, mass murder, mass imprisonment, property theft, and gross human rights abuse while the World looks on – and even though half the Occupied Palestinians are Children and three quarters are Women and Children. Words having failed I have painted a HUGE painting entitled “Jerusalem Madonna” in an attempt to “get through” to a morally unresponsive World dominated by Racist Zionist-beholden, Racist Bush-ite-run America and its Western Bush-ite allies.
For over 40 years Jerusalem has been illegally occupied by Racist Zionist-run Apartheid Israel in a brutal, criminal Occupation involving theft of human rights, theft of property, denial of religious observance and ongoing ethnic cleansing. While the Racist Zionists deny 7 million Indigenous Palestinian refugees the right to live in their homeland, they have been unable so far to remove all the Indigenous Palestinians from the Holy Land. Thus there are roughly about 5 million Jewish Israelis who run the Holy Land, 1.5 million Indigenous Arab Israelis (second class citizens subject to Nazi-style race laws), and about 4 million Indigenous Arab Occupied Palestinians – 1.5 million incarcerated in the Racist Zionist-encircled Gaza Concentration Camp and about 2.5 million in the West Bank Concentration Camp.
The US-, UK-, Australia-, Canada- and generally Western-backed Zionists have been unable to get rid of all the Indigenous Inhabitants of the Holy Land despite 60 years of an ongoing Palestinian Genocide that has involved the active killing of about 50,000 Indigenous Palestinians; 7 million Indigenous Palestinian refugees (4.3 million registered with the UN); post-1967 excess Occupied Palestinian deaths totalling 0.3 million; post-1967 under-5 year old Occupied Palestinian infant deaths totalling 0.2 million; massive theft of land, imprisonment of tens of thousands of Occupied Palestinians in jails, and imposition of draconian conditions in what outstanding Jewish American scholar Professor Noam Chomsky has described as a “Prison”.
Half the Occupied Palestinians are Children and three quarters are Women and Children. Yet the Western World is complicit in an ongoing, horrendous, abusive Imprisonment of a Whole People in awful Prison conditions. It would be too inflammatory to list these conditions here but I will refer the reader to the latest United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) report on the dreadful circumstances of Occupied Palestinian Children – the awful truth is just a few mouse clicks away.
Deliberate, gross, war criminal Racist Zionist non-provision of the life-sustaining requisites demanded unequivocally of Occupiers by the Geneva Convention results in the avoidable death of about 2,400 under-5 year old Occupied Palestinian infants EACH YEAR in the Racist Zionist-run Occupied Palestinian Concentration Camp. The World is seeing the deliberate, passive killing by the Racist Zionists of 2,400 Indigenous Palestinian infants EVERY YEAR – but looks the other way. The Racist Zionists (RZs) have succeeded in driving out 85% of Occupied Palestinian Christians (half of them Children) - but the Christian World looks the other way.
Any people who knowingly deny, ignore, excuse, minimize, obfuscate, advocate, support or are otherwise complicit in the gross human rights abuse of Mother and Child – or indeed of ANYONE – have crossed the line separating decent humanity from Nazi-style barbarism.
The Laws of the International Community are set down and instantly available on the Web – the World knows that this Child-killing, Child-abusing, criminal Occupation is illegal and evil. Outstanding Jewish scholars around the World (such as Professors Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, Ilan Pappe, Bertell Ollman, Tanya Reinhart and Steven Rose) have courageously stood up and roundly condemned the horrendous abusive imprisonment of the Indigenous Palestinians. Thus the following statement by outstanding Jewish American Professor Bertell Ollman (New York University):
“Yet, the facts on the ground, when not obscured by one or another Zionist rationalization, show that the Zionists are the worst anti-Semites in the world today, oppressing a Semitic people as no nation has done since the Nazis” (see “Jews Against Racist Zionism”: http://sites.google.com/site/jewsagainstracistzionism/ ).
But words have failed. The racist, Apartheid Israeli Occupation continues, seven (7) under-5 Occupied Palestinians are murdered by the Racist Zionists every day in the Occupied Palestinian Concentration Camp. The world needs to ACT urgently to stop the slow, remorseless Palestinian Genocide. Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity – inaction kills and inaction is complicity. Decent people are obliged to inform others and to take peaceful action against the Nazi-style racist abomination that is Racist Zionist-run Apartheid Israel.
Decent Jewish Israelis and Arab Israelis at least can vote out the Racist Zionists in order that non-racist peace with equity, justice and reconciliation can happen in the Holy Land (e.g. see suggestions published in MWC News). However others need to impose collective and individual international Sanctions and Boycotts against Apartheid Israel and the people, corporations and countries supporting this proto-Nazi barbarism (notably Racist Zionist-beholden Bush Amerika and Racist White Australia (RWA), whose Bush-ite Prime Minister has been recently “honoured” by the naming after him of a forest in Apartheid Israel on stolen Indigenous Bedouin land).
Ronnie Kasrils, Jewish South African Government Minister and hero in the fight against Apartheid, has described Apartheid Israel thus: “Israel … worse than Apartheid”.
Words having failed, I have painted a huge painting “Jerusalem Madonna” to help convince an unresponsive World of their obligation to help Mother and Child, not just in Occupied Palestine but indeed throughout the World and in all countries currently partly or completely occupied by Zionist beholden Racist Bush-ite Amerika, its allies and surrogates (currently Haiti, Somalia, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Diego Garcia). What gives the proto-Nazi Bush-ites the right to invade and occupy other countries across the world and subject their conquered Indigenous Populations to passive genocide?
“Jerusalem Madonna” is a huge painting (1.3 meters x 2.5 meters) in acrylic on high-quality, doubly primed canvas. It is the latest in a series of Madonna and Child (literally My Lady and Child) paintings I have created to promote love and respect for Mother and Child in a world in which 16 million people die avoidably every year, of whom about 10 million are under-5 year old infants (for links to these paintings and to my recently published book “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”).
All these Mother and Child paintings published on the humane and ethical MWC News are accompanied, as is “Jerusalem Madonna”, by quantitative humanitarian articles in the hope that a combination of words and beautiful images can work where words alone have failed e.g. “Manhattan Madonna & 9/11”, “Sydney Madonna & Aboriginal Genocide”, “Melbourne Madonna. Australian Hedonism, Benign Racism & Denial” and the penultimate Madonna, “War, Deprivation & Denial. “Rosanna Madonna” painting” (for links to all these paintings see “Art for Peace, Planet, Mother & Child”: http://sites.google.com/site/artforpeaceplanetmotherchild/home ).
All these paintings have a common underlying Fibonacci sequence-based Golden Rectangle (Da Vinci Code, Divine Section, Golden Flowers, Truelove) geometry that has been used extensively in Art from the Madonna and Child paintings of the Italian Renaissance onwards. However “Jerusalem Madonna “ and “Rosanna Madonna” also involve a huge cultural conflation of the Italian Renaissance Christian geometry; Medieval Islamic Tile Art (the 17 plane symmetry group patterns analysed mathematically by my great uncle Professor George Polya of the ETH Zurich and Stanford University and exploited by Dutch lithographer M.C. Escher); Byzantine and Eastern Orthodox icons going back to the Early Christian era; 20,000 year old European and Indigenous Australian cave figurative paintings; and modern French (Matisse) and American (Jackson Pollock) abstract expressionism.
The beautiful idea is that if these cultures can co-exist within huge paintings - and especially works involving the universality of Mother and Child – why can’t they co-exist peacefully outside the canvas?
The “Jerusalem Madonna” contains all these cultural references plus local references to the Dome of the Rock; traditional Jerusalem homes; trees; the Walls of the Old City; Angels or Spirits ascending; traditional Orthodox Hassidic Jews worshipping at the Wailing Wall (noting that Orthodox Judaism is opposed to both Racism and Zionism); the Palestinian Mother (loosely based on a young Palestinian Mother who once worked for me), her three Children and - it just cannot be ignored – the barbed wire separating Mother from freedom, security, self-determination, human rights, and indeed from her Child.
We cannot ignore the plight of 3 million Occupied Palestinian Women and Children. We cannot walk by on the other side. Please send this message with its image of the “Jerusalem Madonna” to everyone you can.