Dear friend,

Our web-site www.let-the-muses-speak-iaa.org continues to attract the support of artists worldwide, joining the protest against war and bloodshed. To date, the site exhibits the work of scores of individuals, all united in raising their voices against the wanton killing.

The battles in Lebanon, which initially inspired the project, have now subsided (though there is a continued toll of death and injury among Lebanese civilians from unexploded Israeli ordinance and cluster bombs, and Israeli civilians too continue to suffer from the after-effects of Hizbulla rocket-fire. ). But even if the fighting is out of the headlines, there are no grounds for complacency or indifference: if the guns and rockets in Lebanon are now silent, conflict continues to rage elsewhere. Just a short distance to the south, in the Gaza Strip, an ongoing offensive by Israeli forces, largely unreported in the media, has killed scores of Palestinians including numerous unarmed civilians; hundreds more have suffered injury. Elsewhere in the world too, from Dafur in Sudan to Afghanistan and Iraq, the killing goes on unabated.

The cannons continue to roar. As artists, we must not remain silent in the face of this barbarism. It is up to us to protest the bloodshed by deploying the only "weapons" we command: our artistic creativity.

We repeat our appeal to artists worldwide: DON'T WAIT TILL THE GUNS SOUND ON YOUR DOORSTEP!

Send in work to our online exhibition; join our protest against the bloodshed:

"Let the Muses drown out the cannon's roar!"

The exhibit can be viewed at : www.let-the-muses-speak-iaa.org


Distribute this invitation widely across the art world.



In peace,

Hedva Shemesh