American Jewish Responsibility

The "Breira" poster advertised a conference that took place forty one years ago, today. I was a young illustrator, and the Organization that commissioned me, for a hundred bucks, never returned the original artwork. We ended up in small claims court. So much for World Peace.

The old man in the image is my grandfather, instructing me to be a good Jew at my Bar Mitzvah.To this very day, I believe that being a good Jew means having a good heart, and compassion for all mankind. Just as the Breira Organization felt free to requisition my original art, people feel free today to label Israel as a racist and "aparheid" state. I opposed apartheid in South Africa.....my agent almost killed me when I turned down thousands of dollars to advertise South African tourism during the apartheid era. I opposed racism and injustice then, and I most certainly oppose it today.

The existence of the State of Israel must be recognized by Hamas, Hezbollah, UNESCO and every tinhorn anti-semite who tries to boycott artists from performing in the Jewish state. Lorde, for example,wears hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of costumes and trumpets age old exclusion of the Jewish people. Hitler started his campaign with a boycott of Jewish businesses.

The rise of international anti-semitism today is extremely alarming, and linked, in "intellectual" quarters, with attacks on the legitimacy of the State of Israel. Iran has emerged as an enormous power vowing to wipe Israel off of the map. How can a tiny nation surrounded by powerful enemies on all sides, as well as age old hatreds be expected to maintain standards of justice and equality attained by no other nation on earth ?

Roger Waters, Lorde, and many "activists" most probably came from anti-semitic backgrounds, and many Jewish "activists" have personal issues with their family background as well. When the Ziegfeld comedienne Fanny Brice underwent rhinoplasty, Dorothy Parker famously wrote that "she cut off her nose to spite her race".

Hating on Israel, denying the Holocaust or funneling money into Hamas bombs and tunnels does not help the cause of World Peace any more than does the Trump administrations decision to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. Peace requires equality and respect on both sides. Hating on Israel will not do as much good as building a school or a hospital in Gaza....provided the school is not used to teach hatred.

My drawing for the Breira poster was done in the spirit of Peace and Equality. I do not want my poster, with the image of my Grandfather, to be used in the context of the classically antisemitic posters on your website. Please do not reproduce my poster, or link my web site to your organization.

Thank you.

Harry Pincus

On Wed, Feb 21, 2018 at 11:59 AM, Dan Walsh wrote:

Hello Harry,

May I ask if you have a better jpeg of this image/poster:

http://www.palestineposterproject.org/poster/american-jewish-responsibility-for-peace-in-the-middle-east

And if you are the artist who created this poster:

http://www.palestineposterproject.org/poster/two-years-after-the-yom-kippur-war

If yes, do you have a better jpeg you would share?

I grew up on NYC and have always been a daily reader of the Times...mad respect!

Dan Walsh

Harry Pincus

Feb 21, 2018, 2:30 PM

to me

I have nothing to do with the second Breira poster.

Dan Walsh

Feb 21, 2018, 3:21 PM

to penandinkus

Hello Harry,

Because your letter, which I consider deeply misinformed, was civil and polite I will respond in kind.

Your grandfather taught you well. I never knew either of my grandfathers but my father taught me some worthwhile things as I grew up in the Bronx. One of those things was to be respectful of everyone regardless of race, gender, origins or class. Twice during my childhood my family was issued dispossession notices from the bank. Both my parents always worked two jobs but with six kids, illnesses, tuition, etc. sometimes they just could not make ends meet. We had a neighbor two doors over, Dr. Norman Barst, whose grass I mowed, trash cans I took in and snow I shoveled...as I did for all the neighbors on my block. I would never take any money as my parents would have flayed me if I did. Dr. Barst would always call out "Danny Walsh you are a good kid, come and see me after hours" and that meant he wanted to look at my teeth. One time, when we were on the very verge of dispossession I went to see Dr. Barst after hours as he had called out to me earlier that day. Once I get seated I said to him: Dr. Barst why are you lending my parents fifteen hundred dollars?" Flabbergasted, he immediately closed his office door lest the cleaning lady overhear and he turned to me and said: Danny, where did you hear that? I told him I had overheard my parents the night before as they went to bed thinking I was asleep.

Dr. Barst put both of his hands on my shoulders and said: Danny promise me you will never, ever repeat that you know about this loan. It was not for you or anyone else to ever know about it is a private issue between your folks and me and Mrs. Barst. But since you ask I will tell you: Yours is a good family. You and your family treat us so well and you never let us pay you and you always look out for all your neighbors and we value you Walsh's so much. If your family left, how would I know what kind of famly would move in? Would they be as kind and decent as yours? Maybe, but maybe not. Neighbors help on another and I can help your family now and perhaps someday yours will help mine out of a jam. Remember, this is not charity, your folks would not hear of it in fact I had to convince them to let me help them. I was moved by his honesty with me and I never did repeat what I knew.

That is just a sample of the innumerable experiences I had with my Jewish neighbors, teachers, friends, employers growing up in the great mixing bowl of NYC. For the life of me I cannot think of a single negative experience with any of the Jewish souls in my youthful, or adult, worlds.

I take the time to tell you this because I do not think you mean to cut and hurt with your words. I do not think you mean to injure.

You might be displeased with my work and the various posters at my site and that is your right. What is rightfully yours is to smear me. You wandered all over history and the world, invoking Hitler. Lorde, boycotts, the UN and even Dorothy Parker! That is all about you and your love of Israel. That's your history and personal biases speaking. You are entitled to own those dark feelings if you wish but they are not consonant with the values your grandfather taught and Dr. Barst did not see them in me nor would he were he here now.

I do not research and write about the poster art of the contemporary Palestinian-Zionist conflict because I wish to harm Israel or Jewish people. Nor do I do it to justify violence or racism. I do it because the call of history and scholarship demand it. You can read into my work whatever you wish but I am obligated to point out how deeply misguided you are about my motives.

You can rest assured that I will never reproduce your poster. Ever. The link will remain because it is part of the public domain and you have chosen to make it available for use.

shalom,

Dan Walsh

On Wed, Feb 21, 2018 at 2:28 PM, Harry Pincus wrote:

A revolution which does not aim at changing me by changing the relations between people does not interest me; what is more, I doubt whether a revolution which does not affect me enough to transform me is really a revolution at all. The Palestinian revolution has established new kinds of relations which have changed me, and in this sense the Palestinian revolution is my revolution.

Jean Genet (1970)

Harry Pincus

Feb 21, 2018, 4:02 PM

to me

Dan...

We have a lot in common. I grew up in Brooklyn, my father was a subway conductor (and a socialist) and we were evicted, with my dying grandmother, when I was fourteen. One of my father's great heroes was Michael J. Quill, founder of the Transit Workers Union. I was probably the only Jewish kid brought to the St. Patrick's Day parade, for the purpose of seeing "Red" Mike wave his shillelagh from atop a stage coach.

My wife, a Catholic of Irish and German descent, was offended by some of the hook nose imagery in the posters. My mother was very proud that she and I have the kind of small noses found on some Russian peasants and many Irish, whom I have obviously found to be a beautiful people. I like to call my son "Irish Isaac Pincus"!

I did not intend to offend you, or judge your motives or your scholarship. In fact, I will now endeavor to actually read your paper.

In truth, the Arabic typeface (with no Hebrew words) on the web site, as well as my wife's reaction to some of the anti-semitic posters from France and around the world set me off.

I do have "dark" feelings (what would Malcolm X have thought of the use of "dark" to express bad things) about what is going on in the world. Not only is Israel under siege, but Mr. Trump is threatening every aspect of decency, truth, and what we used to call the American Way.

I lived in France for a year, back in the seventies, and I have since received anti-semitic diatribes from several of my old French friends. They don't even realize how offensive it is to ask me to read a book about the "Jewish question". What's the question? Is there a French question? Are the Germans, or the Irish or the Brits guilty of apartheid because they have a nation for their own people? From what I can gather, as a Jew, I would not feel safe walking the streets of my old neighborhood, Belleville, today.

My father told me that when he was a boy in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Irish kids used to chase the Jewish kids beneath the el, throwing stones and yelling "Go back to Europe". Of course, Hitler was burning Jews in ovens at the time. Fortunately, in my lifetime, I have never experienced anything of the sort, and Thank G-d (whoever He is) that my people were officially absolved of being Christ killers in 1962.

We are all susceptible to the virus of bigotry, and we must all be constantly vigilant in warding it off.

I will read your work and get back to you later, Dan. Hey, even if we disagree, I think we have some common ground. Here's a link to a recent Youtube film about my life.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbybhNmGafE

Attachments area

Preview YouTube video A Harry Pincus Film

A Harry Pincus Film

Dan Walsh

Feb 21, 2018, 4:42 PM

to Harry

Hello Again Harry,

Just to be clear...there are almost 12,000 posters at the PPPA site.

I myself do not "like" many of the posters here: some are vile and disgusting. However, as the Israeli professor, Dr. Elana Shohami, whose class on Jewish culture and history I attended said: There is a vast difference between archiving and advocating. If you ascribe to me (a documentarian) the values of the people who produced some of the most troubling posters you will fail to get the point of the site.

When I started this project, as my graduate thesis at Georgetown, I had no idea it would grow as it did nor did I know that Zionism was a veritable font of posters. There are more than 3,600 poster by and about Zionism at the site. Just click on Wellsprings.

There ARE antisemitic posters at the site as well:

http://www.palestineposterproject.org/special-collection/antisemitismjudaeophobianazi-propagandaanti-jewish-racism

I have written an intro that may serve.

These posters come from the University of Minnesota Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies which embraces, as do I, the concept that if we are not aware of history we are doomed to repeat it.

A final point: There is no Hebrew caption along the top of my site for a very good reason: The PPPA site and my thesis were part of my graduate work in the Arab Studies program at Georgetown. When I started work I did not even know that Zionism had a poster tradition. I chose to add that wellspring because it adds depth and breath to the effort to understand the Palestinian-Zionist conflict via the arts. I also did not know that the USSR, revolutionary Cuba, most European countries and other major sources of Palestine posters existed. To add all those languages because posters in those languages or from those sources exist makes little sense, especially since Arab Studies was the launching point. I use to get many criticisms from Israelis and Zionists who would write in and say "You must remove the Zionist posters from this site and by the way you must add a Hebrew caption along the top"! WTF?

Of course I ignored them and since it is my site and since I take responibility for its content (including to the point of having the windows of my home smashed several years ago as the perps drove away screaming "Price Tag" (this after some articles appeared in the press that included my private address) which reflects Georgetown's policy on free speech which is: In all cases involving speech the sole corrective is always ... more speech. This includes the idea that there is no place for censorship in the quest for the truth.

best,

Dan

Harry Pincus

Feb 21, 2018, 5:19 PM

to me

Problem is, everyone has a different truth.

You might regard the pro-Zionist posters as propaganda, but they were intended to envision the hope of a nation saved from the Holocaust. The hook-nosed hate posters cannot be lumped into the same category as simply "history" because they carry a message of exclusion and annihilation, which continues to resonate, today. As such, they need to be part of a separate category.....the history of anti-semitism, perhaps. By putting these images on your site, you are taking some measure of responsibility, and, on a certain level, perpetuating them for the future. All part of scholarship, I agree, but one might be expected to differentiate.

Trump's said that "there are some fine people on both sides". Nope. Goering and Himmler were not fine people. If you print their faces under a caption of "Twentieth Century Leaders" you are, to some extent, validating what they did, and adding them to a club that included Ghandi.

It's your right to put anything you want on your website, but I just don't want the image of my Grandfather to come up as people are flipping through the hateful and distorted representations of our people that you have reproduced.

I'm sorry that you were attacked for what you are trying to do.I eas attacked by my Greenwich Village neighbors when I criticized Jerrold Nadler for signing on to the Iran treaty. I generally like treaties, but I don't see how you can make a treaty with anyone who is devoted to destroying you, and I thought that Nadler, who represents more Jews than any other Congressman, should have taken that into account. I would prefer it if I were wrong, in opposing that treaty, but it seems that Iran and Israel are now on the verge of war.

Unfortunately, both sides have become entrenched and mentioning anyone's religion is the equivalent of talking about their Mother. I honestly have to say that I don't expect a fair examination of the history of Israel to arise from an "Arab Studies" program, nor would I expect a lot of compassion from many Israeli's. They are backed into a corner, as are the Palestinians, and if you have ever had to defend yourself against numerous adversaries, you will soon recall that survival depends upon to picking up a stone and defending yourself. This is true of both sides, unfortunately.

Dan Walsh

Feb 21, 2018, 7:48 PM

to Harry

I wish you well in all you do.

Yours is a great talent.

Farewell.