[News] Santa Fe Denies Permit for Mural Art Depicting Plight of Palestinian Children

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://truthout.org/articles/santa-fe-denies-permit-for-mural-art-depicting-plight-of-palestinian-children/?utm_source=sharebuttons&utm_medium=mashshare&utm_campaign=mashshare 



  Santa Fe Denies Permit for Mural Art Depicting Plight of Palestinian
  Children

Jeff Haas - January 27, 2020
------------------------------------------------------------------------

The stucco wall on Santa Fe’s Old Pecos Trail is now papered with images 
of Israeli soldiers terrorizing Palestinian women and children. This art 
was created by Navajo artist Remy at the request of Santa Feans for 
Justice in Palestine (SFJP), of which I am a member. For the past six 
years, we have been creating art depicting the conditions of 
Palestinians under the Israeli occupation. Guthrie Miller, the owner of 
the wall where the art has been located since 2014, has supported this 
effort. His wall abuts one of the main thoroughfares leading into Santa 
Fe, and is also on the cross street leading to Museum Hill, where Native 
American Art and history are displayed in several prestigious museums.

Our art began with wheat-pasting the names, photos and biographies of 12 
children killed in the Israeli bombings of Gaza in 2014. More recently, 
the photos contain images of unarmed Palestinians murdered by Israeli 
snipers during Gaza’s March of Return and photos of midnight raids by 
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers blindfolding, jailing and 
terrorizing Palestinian children. The images on our signs have been 
routinely desecrated and vandalized, some after two weeks and some after 
two months. Our most recent sign in December displayed five 6-year-old 
Palestinian girls in winter coats with the caption, “These Palestinian 
Children Are Just Like Yours 
<https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/pro-palestinian-art-appears-on-old-pecos-trail-wall/article_b28226ba-30a5-11ea-a755-9375ab21b64f.html>.” 
This graphic, like those preceding it for the past three years, was 
confined to one panel of the wall and most recently to a 3’ x 5’ sign, 
authorized by the city. The nonthreatening photo of the Palestinian 
girls was torn apart within 72 hours.

In response, on January 5, Navajo artist Remy wheat-pasted to six of the 
large 9’ by 6’ stucco wall panels life-size images of IDF forces, 
arresting, threatening, intimidating and pointing gun and tank barrels 
at Palestinian children, some of whom had been killed. There is a large 
caption in a middle panel reading “End Military Aid to Israel.”

The images are jarring and meant to awaken the public to what our tax 
dollars are doing and get support for the Congressional bill to stop 
funding Israel’s use of military courts, judges and soldiers to 
threaten, intimidate and, in some instances, torture Palestinian 
children. Remy also pointed to how the art reminds us that Israel’s 
actions mirror the atrocities committed by the U.S. against its own 
Indigenous population. He stated that the images of armed Israeli 
soldiers and tanks confronting Palestinian women and children show “the 
similarities when you look at the Indigenous struggle of this continent 
and the Indigenous struggle there.

The /Santa Fe New Mexican/ and the /Albuquerque Journal/ have written 
stories reproducing the images, and the comment section has mirrored the 
conflicting reactions. The/New Mexican/ reported that the local Jewish 
community was “sharply divided 
<https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/pro-palestinian-art-appears-on-old-pecos-trail-wall/article_b28226ba-30a5-11ea-a755-9375ab21b64f.html>.” 
Not surprisingly, a local rabbi has labeled the wall art as 
“anti-Semitic” — a term he and many others inaccurately apply to 
exposures of Israel’s shameful treatment of Palestinians. This is part 
of a conscious effort to suppress the dialogue and provide Israel with 
immunity from criticism of its deadly policies. (As many Jewish critics 
have pointed out 
<https://truthout.org/articles/the-dangers-of-conflating-anti-zionism-with-anti-semitism/>, 
conflating critique of Israel with anti-Semitism is a dangerous game.) 
Meanwhile, the Santa Fe and Albuquerque chapters of Jewish Voice for 
Peace and The Red Nation have actively supported and defended the art as 
a reminder of the injustices perpetrated against Palestinians and other 
Indigenous people.

In the face of this controversy, we maintain that it is important for us 
to display this art in public. Why? Because the opinions of people in 
the U.S. matter, when it comes to Israel’s actions. Without U.S. 
military, financial and diplomatic backing, Israel could not carry out 
rampant human rights abuses such as home demolitions, imprisonment of 
the entire population of Gaza, and putting its people “on a diet 
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/israels-starvation-diet-gaza/11810>” 
to advance its apartheid objectives. Our images are intended to get the 
onlookers to oppose U.S.-sponsored Israeli state terrorism, just as the 
iconic photo of the Vietnamese girl running from a U.S. napalm attack 
shocked many into opposing the Vietnam War.

On January 8, a representative from the Santa Fe historic district came 
to the home of Guthrie Miller, the property owner of the wall and 
informed him that if he came to City Hall and applied for a permit, he 
would get administrative approval for the wall art. Guthrie met Lisa 
Roach, Historic Preservation Division manager and Eli Isaacson, acting 
Land Use Department director on January 10 and again was told that 
approval would be granted.

By midday on Monday, January 13, /Santa Fe New Mexican/ reporter Robert 
Nott was also informed by the land department that the permit would be 
granted. Nevertheless, on Monday afternoon, Santa Fe City spokeswoman 
Lilia Chacon announced that homeowner Guthrie Miller “will not be 
receiving administrative approval to keep the mural up because the 
medium (papier-mâché) is not allowed in the historic district.”

In fact, the municipal code is totally silent about the medium for wall 
art, neither allowing nor prohibiting any medium, and Guthrie’s wall 
complies with requirements for stucco walls. The letter to Guthrie on 
January 14 
<https://truthout.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/santafeletterart.jpg> 
offered the same pretext for the denial as Chacon’s and was in fact 
signed by Roach, who had never raised the issue of the medium 
previously, nor had she objected to it in her meetings with Miller.

One must conclude that the real reason for the denial is likely the 
content, not the medium, of the murals. Despite the fact that many young 
people, including many young Jews, are more sympathetic to the 
Palestinians than the Israeli government, many older people and 
institutions — and the evangelicals and authoritarians within the U.S. 
government — give uncritical support to Israel and seek to silence its 
critics by labeling them anti-Semitic. The wall art images contradict 
the narrative of Israel as the victim. They are not intended to be 
pleasant, because the conditions Palestinians face in Gaza and the other 
occupied territories within Israel are abhorrent, deadly and 
dehumanizing. The purpose of the art is to confront and sensitize people 
about what they and their government are facilitating, and the 
devastating effects of funding the Israeli military. It is to make these 
impacts known, so onlookers will be morally outraged and oppose U.S. 
support of the abuses of the Israeli military. The message is not just 
about what the IDF is doing, but about our complicity. To reject that 
complicity, we must demand that our country stop funding the Israeli 
military until it complies with international and human rights law.

There are concrete ways to take political action on this issue right 
now. One is to urge our representatives to support Rep. Betty McCullom’s 
pending H.R. 2407 
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/israels-starvation-diet-gaza/11810> 
(“No Way to Treat a child”), which would cut off U.S. funding to the 
Israeli military’s treatment of Palestinian children. Thus far, our New 
Mexico representatives have ignored this plea despite the fact that 
Israel is the only country to apply military law to juveniles.

Meanwhile, back in Sante Fe, wall owner Guthrie Miller has appealed the 
ruling, which could ban all mural art in the historic district because 
no permissible medium is set forth in the code. Guthrie and SFJP believe 
the current denial of a permit is a violation of the First Amendment, 
which does not allow for banning free expression based on the content 
being disagreeable to some. Opponents of the art will argue it has no 
relevance in Santa Fe. Many see military funding of Israel as only a 
foreign policy issue, but it becomes of domestic importance when 
candidates court Zionist and Evangelical support and money by competing 
for giving the most military aid to Israel. The appeal to maintain the 
art points out that Santa Fe’s contribution to funding the Israel 
military from 2009 to 2018 was $14,593,839 
<https://public.tableau.com/shared/PH2HZC8H6?:display_count=y&:origin=viz_share_link&:embed=y> 
— which could have funded hundreds of people seeking affordable housing, 
green jobs training, early reading programs or primary health care.

The sign and art wars will continue — as does the struggle of the 
Palestinian people for freedom and equality.

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 https://freedomarchives.org/
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