I went to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem the other day and was stunned to see a work of art that dramatizes the Palestinian right of return. The piece is called “Al Awda (The Return).” It is a video created by the Jerusalem artist Jumana Emil Abboud, in an exhibition of contemporary art that opened in July and is curated by the American artist Susan Hiller.
In Abboud’s piece, a woman dressed in black, who looks to me to be of Arab descent, wanders out a trail into the forest, pausing to drop bread crumbs behind her so that she can find her way back. The video goes on for about 5 minutes. You keep waiting for her to return, but she never does, she just keeps dropping bread crumbs and wandering out that trail.
The spiritual/political thrust of the piece is clear: This gentle person wants to go home. And of course international law recognizes her right.
I have not found any Israeli coverage of the piece. A European museum describes the video: “[H]er journey – a search of a home – is endless: the video shows her going over the same ground again and again in a continual loop.”
The Israel Museum also includes, in its halls of Israeli art, Palestinian artist Sharif Waked’s dark video of 2003, “Chic Point,” which imagines Palestinian fashion for Israeli checkpoints– clothes for men that open up around the torso so that security can examine them for possible bombs.
I saw several American Jews stopped at the video, clucking over it. Own it.
This is a hopeful post. As Joel Kovel has said, the terrible guilt that Jews feel over the Nakba has resulted in denial; but that denial is beginning to ease. An awareness of the grievous damage done to Palestinian human rights by Israel is leaking into American Jewish consciousness and even into Israeli society.
