The Arabist

The Arabist

By Issandr El Amrani and friends.

More Emily Jacir

The New York Times runs a review of Emily Jacir's show at the Guggenheim (I've already discussed their interview with her earlier). 
Dry, cerebral, fragmentary and stylistically derivative, the exhibition is less affecting and less informative than any number of newspaper and magazine articles about the Palestinian situation you might have read over the last 40 years.

I went to the show's opening and thought it was very affecting. 

Anyway, despite the NYT reviewer's claims that his problem is with the formal execution of the show--not with its political content--he spends a good deal of time questioning that content.
If one were to judge from Ms. Jacir’s work, Mr. Zuaiter was innocent of any connection to the Munich murders, eliminated rather because he was an eloquent spokesman for the Palestinian cause.

In the wall text that introduces the exhibition, however, there is a curious qualification. It says that Mr. Zuaiter was never “conclusively” linked to the Olympics murders. This introduces the shadow of a doubt. Is there a chance that he was somehow involved? Ms. Jacir’s exhibition can thus be viewed as a brief for the defense, but this is problematic. How can we know if the artist is manipulating her material, leaving out anything that might be suspicious or incriminating? 

Here's the wiki page on Zuaiter. It seems clear to me that while the Mossad suspected him of being linked to the Munich attacks, no evidence has been made public to prove this--and shouldn't the burden of proof be on them?