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Thursday September 20, 2007

WEB EXCLUSIVE: Mission mural to tone down — but not remove — pro-Palestinian imagery

by joe eskenazi
staff writer

A quintet of surly, kaffiyeh-wearing Arab figures bursting through a fissure shaped exactly like the state of Israel may seem out of place alongside elements of Latino pride.

It also may seem out of place on 24th and Capp Streets in the heart of San Francisco’s Mission District. But following a unanimous Wednesday, Sept. 19 vote by San Francisco’s Arts Commission, the colorfully painted figures will be there for years to come.

The commission approved a modification of the mural, which has graced the wall of a city-owned parking lot since July.

Following complaints at that time from the Jewish Community Relations Council and the Anti-Defamation League, Jill Manton, the program director for the city’s public art program, realized that the mural on the wall did not exactly resemble the sketch the Arts Commission had approved.

“This wasn’t something insignificant like adding an extra flower. By the City Charter, this needed to be returned to the arts commission,” she said.

Per city policy, with the process still mired in the approval stage, the paychecks for the mural’s artists were frozen.

Nancy Hernandez, the youth program coordinator for HOMEY, the organization that created the mural, acknowledged that her group never presented the commission with a graphic representation of the Palestinian solidarity imagery, which occupies a small portion of the 117-foot long, 10-foot high mural. Yet she notes that she did present the commission with text indicating a desire to reference “Iraq or Palestine” on the right side of the mural.

A month of meetings with the JCRC, ADL, Jewish Voice for Peace, Arab-American groups and myriad artists produced the compromise approved by the city: The kaffiyeh draped over one person’s face will be altered so the mural now portrays a woman wearing the kaffiyeh as a headscarf and the Israel-shaped chasm will be removed in favor of a blue sky. Also, an olive tree will be added to the section — as will a wall resembling the Israeli security barrier.

The commission’s approval followed a round of public commentary, featuring much vitriol directed toward the JCRC and ADL and multiple accusations that the Arts Commission was engaging in “censorship.”

Jim Haber, one of four members of Jewish Voice for Peace to speak, alleged that the Israel-shaped gap the mural figures have broken in the wall was far more apparent in photographs of the mural than when viewed by the naked eye, and described the Arts Commission meeting as a waste of time that made “a mockery of real anti-Semitism in this world.”

Lily Haskell, a self-described “Arab working in the Mission” casually chided the commission for “being bullied by racist Zionists.”

Marta Martinez, a San Francisco student, induced a round of head-nodding and approving murmurs when she claimed that leaders of a recent youth trip she took to the U.S.-Mexico border revealed that the very same company that erected Israel’s security barrier was building the U.S.-Mexico fence. While no one mentioned it at the meeting, this is an oft-repeated canard: In actuality, the American subsidiary of Israel’s Elbit Systems has been subcontracted by Boeing to provide high-tech cameras for the U.S.-Mexico barrier.

“These comments reinforce the polarizing, divisive elements we were worried about” in the mural, Rabbi Doug Kahn, executive director of the JCRC, told the crowd.

“This is exactly why we had our original concerns.”

The JCRC still endorsed the revised edition of the mural, albeit not enthusiastically.

“One of our major concerns in the future is that things don’t get this far down the road with public art, so the best we can do is come up with a compromise that no one is particularly happy with,” said Kahn.

Jonathan Bernstein, regional director of the ADL, was also less than thrilled with the revised mural.

“I still believe it has an ostracizing affect,” he said. “It does on me.”

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