Over at Haaretz is a good article on Swiss artist Olivier Suter and his ‘Enemies’ project. (Can you tell the difference between an Israeli and a Palestinian?). Suter has started with Israelis and Palestinians, but he is moving on to Rwanda and other places. In some ways, it is obvious what he is doing. Yet people continue to demonize others for various reasons. Projects like this can be a corrective and a reminder how similiar we really are.
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Jeez, this is such a great idea. Taking the visages of enemies and placing them side by side, and voila! Can you tell which is which? Which is Jew, which is Arab? No, then, they have absolutely no reason to be enemies, do they?
Really now, can you actually believe that if you can’t tell the difference, they must not have a reason to be angry at one another. Or to fight wars. Or . . . .
I am sorry for the sarcastic tone, but that this project has even a snowball’s chance in hell of succeeding, or that anyone could believe such nonsense . . . well, it just doesn’t have any chance whatsoever. And it is naive in the extreme to believe that it does.
Let me state the obvlious: The reason many Jews and Arabs look alike is a simple matter of origin. They are both semitic – excluding the European, Asian, etc. strains – peoples . But, trust me, that is where the similarity ends.
Do you recall that sixty-someth years ago, one country decided that a sizeable number of its citizens – despite the fact that they were indistinguishable from the next door neighbors – no longer deserved to live? That state: Germany. The result: Holocaust.
I’ll tell you what. Get some pictures of some Sunni Abs and Shia Arabs and compare them. Semitic looking, aren’t they? And Arabs. And Muslim. Then tell me why Muslim Arabs are slaughtering one another all over the world.
Did you happen to see the article this morning concerning a fiteen-year-old Palestinian boy who was killed by his own family for being SUSPECTED of conspiring with Israelis?
Even if the boy was guilty – murdering your own child!? That is effing demented.
Now tell me again, how were we going to make peace between people who look alike?
Keep me posted.
The project might change some people’s minds but the problem is, the people you hate tend to be the people that are most like you. Israelis and Palestinians is just about the best example.
Zoek je nog mensen om mee te doen aan je project?
Am I looking for more people to join your project? I think you will have to ask the artist. I was simply mentioning it.