[R][R][F] 2004 —>XP ~ E-Journal - Vol.7
www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004 <http://www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004>
available online also on
www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004/e-journal.htm <http://www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004/e-journal.htm>
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editorial at the end of this text—>
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Features
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1 [R][R][F] 2004 —>XP - News!!
2. public space- Yerewan/Armenia
–> "making history" -
a new curatorial contribution by Stephanie Benzaquen
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1. News
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The 4th presentation suite
includes in July/August two media festivals hosting
[R][R][F] 2004 —>XP
—>
public_space_festival Yerewan (Armenia)
23 JUly - 03 August 2004 www.accea.org <http://www.accea.org>
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and
West Coast Numusic & Electronic Art Festival Stavanger/Norway
18-22 August 2004 www.numusic.no <http://www.numusic.no>
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b) [R][R][F] 2004 —>XP will be installed in a large interactive
installation
as a part of Biennale for Electronic Art Perth/Australia
7 September - 17 November and
Agricola de Cologne will stay for several weeks in September/October
as an "artist in residence" in Australia on this occasion.
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2. public space Yerewan–>
~E-Journal - Vol.7
contents
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–>
1. "Making History" a new curatorial contribution by Stephanie Benzaquen
a) curatorial statement
b) about the curator
c) about the curated artists and art works
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2. Recent calls
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1.
it represents certainly a challenge for
[R][R][F] 2004 —>XP for participating in a festival in one of the
Caucasian republics
and the project is proud to publish and include especially on this occasion
a new curatorial contribution to RRF version 2.0
prepared by Stephanie Benzaquen (Amsterdam/Netherlands - Holon/Israel)
entitled "Making History".
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This contribution is from its structure not yet complete,
but be will be developed in different steps and on different levels,
to be published in coming physical [R][R][F] 2004 —>XP events.
.
For Yerewan, it includes in the first step
following three Tel-Aviv/Israel based artists
Ariel Yanay-Shani, Dana Levy,
Liat and Ariel Shechter-Mayrose
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The contribution can be accessed via the artistic body of
[R][R][F] 2004 —>XP www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004 <http://www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004>

—>
"MAKING HISTORY"
a curatorial statement by Stephanie Benzaquen

"Two days after the second truce came into effect, the Seventh Brigade was
ordered to withdraw from Nazareth. Avraham Yaffe, who had commanded the 13th
battalion in the assault on the city, now reported to me with orders from
Moshe Carmel to take over from me as its military governor. I complied with
the order, but only after Avraham had given me his word of honour that he
would do nothing to harm or to displace the Arab population. My demand way
sound strange, but I had good reason to feel concerned on this subject.
Only a few hours previously, Haim Laskov had come to me with astounding
orders: Nazareth's civilian population was to be evacuated! I was shocked
and horrified. I told him I would do nothing of the sort - in view of our
promises to safeguard the city's people, such a move would be both
superfluous and harmful. I reminded him that scarcely a day earlier, he and
I, as representatives of the Israeli army, had signed the surrender
document, in which we solemnly pledged to do nothing to harm the city or its
population. When Haim saw that I refused to obey the order, he left.
A scarce twelve hours later, Avraham Yaffe came to tell me that his
battalion was relieving my brigade; I felt sure that this order had been
given because of my defiance of the evacuation order. But although I was
withdrawn from Nazareth, it seems that my disobedience did have some effect.
It seems to have given the high command time for second thoughts, which led
them to the conclusion that it would, indeed, be wrong to expel the
inhabitants of Nazareth. To the best of my knowledge, there was never any
more talk of the evacuation plan, and the city's Arab citizens have lived
there since ever".

This story is reported by Peretz Kidron, who was asked in 1974 to be the
"ghost writer" of Paul Dunkelman, a Canadian Jew, who wished to write his
memoirs. Paul Dunkelman, combat officer with the Canadian expeditionary
force in France during World War Two, and volunteered for the Israeli army
in 1948. He was appointed to the relatively senior post of brigade
commander, charged with dislodging Arab forces in central and upper Galilee.
When Peretz Kidron got back the draft chapter he had given for corrections
to Paul Dunkelman, he saw the following comment penciled in the margin of
the episode in question: "I wish to consider whether I should include this
or not". Eventually, the episode was removed from the memoirs .

In the eighties, the Israeli state archives of "Independence War" became
available. Access to official records including documents of Prime Minister'
s office, Jewish industries and personal diaries, was at last possible. This
moment marked the appearance of "New History", an ensemble of critical
researches dealing with the Israeli historiography of 1948. These
investigations led by the "New Historians" (Simha Flappan, Benny Morris,
Ilan Pappe, Tom Segev, Avi Shlaim ) widened into a general movement of
academicians, journalists, artists, and writers, all calling into question
the previously accepted interpretations of events. This movement encountered
a strong interest in Israel. Documentary films, studies, and essays show how
eager Israelis were to understand, and reconsider. This wave of interest did
not survive the explosion of the Second Intifada in September 2000, with its
resulting discourses, re-framing and interdictions.

The perspectives generated by New History on the Nakbah ("Catastrophe" -
Palestinian term for the Israeli Independence War) revealed facts which were
hard to cope with for the Israelis. The New Historians refuted the view that
Palestine was empty when Jewish settlers came and that Palestinians
voluntarily left in 1948. The data they provided were explicit: more than 11
towns and 400 villages destroyed by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF);
750.000 Palestinians expulsed. Other sources even referred to over one
million of expelled Palestinians . The New Historians undermined the Israeli
myth of "few against many", by revealing the secret agreement between the
Jordanian Army and the IDF, creating a parity on battlefield. In his article
in Middle Eastern Studies of January 1986, Benny Morris (Ben-Gurion
University of Beer-Sheva), basing his research on the copy of a 1948 report
of the intelligence branch of the Israeli Army revealed that 72% of the
Palestinians were expelled by Israeli forces (IDF and unofficial Zionist
groups like Irgun and Stern). This exodus was contrary to the strategic
desires of the Arab Higher Committee which, according to some sources had
made radio calls to leave, but never broadcasted any instruction. When Ilan
Pappe (senior lecturer of Political Science at the University of Haifa)
stated that Palestinians had suffered ethnic cleansing during the birth of
Israel, he touched the utterly forbidden point. This was an electroshock for
the Israeli society.

"New History" was - and remains - a debated movement as indicate its
numerous designations: "Revisionist History", "Post-Zionism", even
"Anti-Zionism". Several researches have been far from accepted. The student
from Haifa University, who revealed in his MA dissertation that the IDF
massacred the inhabitants of the village of Tantura, has been sued in court
by veteran soldiers of the army unit he accused. Haifa University warned
they would disqualify him unless he would change his findings. This somber
affair shows how unacceptable it was, for Israelis, to imagine their army as
perpetrators of massacres - even worse maybe, planning such massacres. The
"Old Historians" (Efraim Karsh, Itamar Rabinovich, Anita Shapira, Shabtai
Tevet) opposed the investigations of the "New Historians", accusing them of
lacking of evidences, of falsifying documents, if not inventing them . One
confronts here the power of the ultimate taboo: a master-plan for mass
expulsion could not have existed, let alone planning massacres. How to
explain that Plan D (Daleth), from the beginning of 1947, was calling for
the "destruction of villages (setting fire to, blowing up, and planting
mines in the debris) especially those population centers which are difficult
to control continuously"?

"Post-Zionism is in effect what used to be called anti-Zionism. (.) The
intellectual heirs of the early anti-Zionism are, first, the