Brandeis University officials have removed from a school exhibit artwork that depicts injured and bloodied Palestinian children, according to a media report.
The images were painted by Palestinian teenagers at the request of a Jewish Israeli student at the Jewish-sponsored college, who wanted to bring the Palestinian viewpoint to campus. However, school officials said the paintings were too one-sided.
The paintings were removed Saturday, four days into a two-week exhibit at a school library, The Boston Globe reported on Wednesday.
Lior Halperin, the student who organized the exhibit, called the school’s action "outrageous."
"This (is) an educational institution that is supposed to promote debate and dialogue," Halperin told The Globe. "Let’s talk about what it is: 12-year-olds from a Palestinian refugee camp. Obviously it’s not going to be about flowers and balloons."
The images include a bulldozer threatening a girl, and a boy with an amputated leg on a crutch. Halperin had contacted a friend who works in a Bethlehem refugee camp and asked teenagers to paint images of Palestinian life.
School officials said between six and a dozen complaints were made.
Brandeis was founded in 1948 and is the only nonsectarian Jewish-sponsored college in the United States. Half of its students are Jewish.
"It was completely from one side in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and we can only go based on the complaints we received," Brandeis spokesman Dennis Nealon said, according to The Globe.
Nealon said the school would consider displaying the artwork again in the fall, if it is alongside pieces showing the Israeli point of view, The Globe reported.
Halperin, 27, is an Israeli, and a veteran of the Israeli military. Her "Voices from Palestine" exhibit was a final project for a class called "The Arts of Building Peace."
*this article was sourced from Ha’aretz newspaper
