Day: April 2, 2018

An artful Saudi charm offensive

Posted in Adam Friend - April 2, 2018 - 1 Comment

Quite a bit has been written recently about the efforts of the Saudi state – and its de facto leader Mohammed bin Salman, in particular – to win influence in the White House. Little has been said, however, about the parallel track of Saudi public diplomacy aimed at shifting the opinion of the common American.

This charm offensive has ratcheted up in recent days since the announcement of Mohammed bin Salman’s multicity tour of the U.S., which began last Monday. Since then we’ve seen a rash of public-facing events featuring the ambitious Crown Prince: he’s meeting with Oprah; he’s getting a latte at Starbucks; his magazine is on sale at Rite-Aid.

One of the more illuminating events put on during bin Salman’s visit involved the Crown Prince only tangentially. On the night of March 21, the Saudi embassy in Washington teamed up with the Middle East Institute to organize a one-night-only exhibition of Saudi art at Foggy Bottom’s Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The event was sponsored by MBS’ personal philanthropic venture the Misk Foundation, with art curated by the associated Misk Art Institute. Despite that morning’s snow, the event saw hundreds of attendees until late into the evening.

Unless you’re among a select sliver of the world’s population, you probably have little familiarity with the world of contemporary Saudi art. Let me assure you, this is exactly what the event’s organizers expect of you. A newly-published overview of Saudi art summarizes the conversation they want you to have:

 

For the Kennedy Center, Misk chose to feature a variety of pieces from Saudi artists, ranging from modernist installations to more traditional paintings. There were quasi-political works such as Ahmad Angawi’s installation Street Pulse, whose microphones reflect a thirst for free expression, and Nugamshi’s video Mirage, in which the artist uses crude oil to write out the title. Both Amr Alnagmah’s photography piece Digital Spirituality and Ahmed Mater’s Magnetism to frame the Kaaba in a new light, while Angawi’s Wijha 2:148 (see below) depicts the massive development taking place in Mecca since the 1980s. Not everything is new, however – the event also featured a number of massive murals, painted by a team led by husband and wife Ali Moghawi and Fatimah Hassan in a style known as Al-Qatt Al-Asiri, recognized in 2017 on UNESCO’s list of Intangible Cultural Heritage.

As if to certify the importance of the event, the exhibit was visited by a number of Saudi dignitaries, including Minister of Culture and Information Awwad al-Awwad and royal family member (and noted art enthusiast) Prince Badr bin Abdullah. If the intent behind visits from these big names was to draw in more attendees, I can vouch for its success – many people I spoke confessed they had no knowledge the event was happening until they spotted the Saudi delegation moving through the Kennedy Center. The extra publicity attracted some unfriendly attention as well, with protesters from Code Pink arriving early to demonstrate against the Saudi war in Yemen.

Beyond the quality of the art, what does all this effort say about the Saudi state? The ruling clique in Riyadh is trying to sell themselves as ambitious reformers of their aging system. So far, the Saudi soft power initiative has been focused on personal outreach. This event, however, confirms Mohammed bin Salman’s ambitions for advancing not just his own image to a US audience, but also the image of a new Saudi nation that he intends to debut. If the Misk Foundation’s art initiative is any indication of a trend, MBS aims to convince even the average American that a dynamic, cultured Saudi Arabia is on the rise. So yes, art from Saudi Arabia. And undoubtedly a whole lot more to come.

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Next year in Jerusalem

Posted in Daniel Serwer - April 2, 2018 - 1 Comment

Israel’s use of deadly force against mostly nonviolent Gaza demonstrators on Friday raises lots of questions: as none of the Palestinians succeeded in crossing the border fence, why did the IDF use live ammunition? They claim to have fired only on those using violence or trying to cross into Israel, but on the Gaza side there are lots of videos and eye witnesses contradicting that claim. Was the Israeli government focused on violent militants, or was it really trying to frighten masses of nonviolent Palestinians away from the demonstrations? “Violence” in this instance seems to refer to throwing of stones, but the Israelis present seem to have been well out of range. Burning tires and approaching the border fence are definitely not violent or terrorist acts. Why are they being referred to as such?

I suppose we’ll never know the answers to these questions, as the Israelis will not allow an independent investigation. They appear to me genuinely frightening by the prospect of thousands of Palestinian refugees walking peacefully into Israel and claiming their rights to land their grandparents left, or were compelled to leave, in 1948. The Israelis are determined not only to stop that kind of popular protest, even if peaceful, but also to scare Palestinians into submission. Doing so redounds to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s benefit in domestic politics: his supporters are unconcerned with the deaths of Palestinians and devoted to an expansive vision of Israel’s security needs.

During my visits to both Israel and Palestine in January, I was unable to visit Gaza, but talked with a nonviolent activist who lives there. Gaza is desperate. Even the White House recognizes that the conditions in which its two million people are living–without adequate clean water, little electricity, limited medical care, and few jobs–are unacceptable. Who would not want to demonstrate? The Israelis and the Palestinian Authority would like the refugees to blame Hamas, which has controlled Gaza since 2006. Hamas is supporting the demonstrations, trying to deflect criticism for its governance failures. It seems to be succeeding, not least because it too uses violence and brooks little opposition.

Of course Palestinian lives matter to the friends, families, and communities from which they come. The fifteen or more reported killed Friday will have hundreds if not thousands of relatives and personal acquaintances who will mourn them, in addition to a far wider circle who feel they are martyrs to the Palestinian cause. Will future protests attract more than the 30,000 or so who attended the first demonstration? The plan has been to repeat them until May 15, the day Israelis celebrate the country’s 1948 independence while Palestinians mark the nakba (catastrophe).

But Palestinian lives matter in other respects too. Israel may be an electoral democracy, but it is not a liberal democracy that treats everyone as having equal rights. This matters because its friends in Europe and the US shouldn’t settle for less. Either Israel needs to treat the Palestinians whose Gaza and West Bank territory it embargoes as equal to its own citizens, or it has to let them establish their own state and allow them to govern it as they see fit, so long as it doesn’t threaten Israel. For most American Jews, there is no acceptable in-between, as Ron Lauder recently pointed out. Most of us will not support an increasingly theocratic Israel in which Palestinian lives don’t matter.

It is ironic that the Jewish and Palestinian historical narratives are mirror images of each other. The Jews were exiled almost two thousand years ago and now feel it is time to reclaim their ancient lands. The Palestinians were exiled 70 years ago, from lands they had occupied for most of those two thousand years. “Next year in Jerusalem,” the cry with which Jews finished the Passover Seder Friday evening, could just as well be uttered by Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, most of whom do not have the permit required to reach the Haram al Sharif. It is time for all of us to acknowledge the others’ aspirations. Palestinian lives do matter.

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