Israel/Palestine Thread

Palestine makes it to the Venice Biennale despite Italy's refusal to recognise Palestine

https://www.palestinechronicle.com/gaza-no-words-see-exhibit-memory-and-resistance-at-the-venice-biennale/

At the Venice Biennale, Palestine has no national pavilion. This is not a cultural matter. It is a political one.

The mechanism is specific. Under the Biennale’s own rules, only states recognized by Italy are eligible to mount a national pavilion. Italy has yet to recognize Palestine, placing it among a dwindling minority of Western European countries that have not done so. The United Kingdom, France, Spain, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, and Slovenia have all taken that step. Italy has not. The result is that a bureaucratic distinction, a diplomatic choice Italy has yet to make, becomes the lock on the door of one of the world’s most visible cultural stages.

While Israel — a state carrying out a documented genocide against the Palestinian people — continues to have its national pavilion at the Biennale, Palestine is forced to appear only through Collateral Events. This asymmetry is not neutral. It reflects the same structures of power that allow Israeli war crimes to be committed before the eyes of the world without anyone being held to account. Allowing Israel to continue participating in major international cultural events while it massacres Palestinians is an act of complicity. This is what is called art-washing: using culture to clean an image stained with blood.

It is in this space — a space not formally granted, but occupied with determination — that the Palestine Museum US returns to the Biennale for the second time. The first participation was in 2022, with the exhibition “From Palestine With Art” at the 59th Venice Biennale. That presence opened a path. This one confirms it.
“Gaza – No Words – See Exhibit” is an official collateral event of the 61st Venice Biennale 2026. Opened on May 9, 2026, at Palazzo Mora and open until November 22, with free admission, it is not simply an artistic exhibition. It is an act of cultural resistance.

The fourth anniversary of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh's murder by IDF snipers is on April 11. FBI unable to identify killer(s) even though the killer was named to an investigation team. Convenient for the IDF that the killer was dead before he was named!

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/5/8/cpj-demands-progress-on-us-probe-of-journalist-abu-akleh-killing-four-year

It said the “lack of concrete progress” represents a failure by the US government to respond to the “killing of one of its citizens by a foreign military”.

It noted that there had been no formal interviews with witnesses, “despite the willingness of multiple witnesses to cooperate”, and no signs of FBI activity to gather evidence in Israel or Palestine.

Longtime TV correspondent for Al Jazeera Arabic, Abu Akleh, was covering Israeli army raids in the West Bank city of Jenin when she was killed by Israeli forces on May 11, 2022. She was wearing a clearly marked press vest when she was shot dead.

hmmm…………wasn’t Mr Kerr sharing a tent with Col. Muammer Ghaddafi back in the day if I recall correctly?

Not exactly a model of democracy the bould Colonel I would have thought.

Rather strange volte face if I may say?

^ "The Silwan area, located south of the Old City of Jerusalem and annexed to the city’s municipal boundaries, is home to some 20,000 Palestinian residents. Its unique location next to the Old City, near al-Aqsa Mosque for Palestinians and the Temple Mount for Jews,  puts it at the forefront  of the Israeli regime’s campaign of dispossession and displacement in Jerusalem, as part of a broader plan to cleanse the area of its Palestinian residents and Judaize the neighborhoods  surrounding the Old City " - B'Tselem

Starry: ^ It is considered to be Judaisation. Consider the City of David project, which starts in Silwan:

Netanyahu in 2025 uploaded a video on X showing him walking through a tunnel excavation. Bibi has declared multiple times that Jerusalem will always remain under Israeli sovereignty. Pretty awful.

Silwan or "IR David"? Confronting the Manipulation of Archaeology to Seize Land
Zahra Khudruj / October 30 2025
https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1658071/

“[...] The Antiquities Authority and the Elad Association also began constructing the Wadi Hilweh Tunnel as part of a network of underground tunnels within the development plan of what is called the City of David Archaeological Park. The tunnel begins at the Silwan Spring south of the Wadi Hilweh neighborhood, extends northward beneath the neighborhood (under Palestinian homes), and cuts under the walls of the Old City toward the Western Wall of the al-Aqsa Mosque."

For kicks now

Yet you're here on the dying message board putting your point across same as SeanW?

Maybe try to put whatever point you think you're trying to make in a more coherent way. What you've just said isn't even as remotely as edgy as you probably think it is.