Aesthetic Peace Tweets

Artist Mel Alexenberg with the ambassadors of Israel and United States at the opening of his "Aesthetic Peace" exhibition in Prague

Dots are a counter-pattern woven into an Islamic rug

The tweets below are a commentary on the the biblical book Numbers/Bamidbar from the Torah Tweets blogart project 

 

Four of our grandsons are serving in the Israel Defense Forces protecting us from enemies committed to Israel's destruction.

When Mel served in the IDF, we had hoped that our children and grandchildren would live in our land at peace with all our neighbors.

Netanyahu made it clear in his address to the US Congress that peace can only come when the Arabs accept a Jewish State in their midst.

However, all peace processes from Oslo to Obama are doomed to failure because the conflict is not political but aesthetic and religious.

At his Aesthetic Peace exhibition in Prague, Mel explains to the ambassadors of Israel and US about his peace plan derived from Islamic art.

Behind them is a painting of a pattern from a Damascus mosque superimposed on a map of the Islamic world in which Israel is a counter pattern.

The continuously repeated geometric patterns in Islamic art are perceived by Arabs as spreading across North Africa and the Middle East.

They see Israel as a blemish that disrupts the pattern, an alien presence they try to eliminate through war, terrorism and political action.

Rug weavers from Islamic lands intentionally weave a patch of dissimilar pattern to break the symmetry of their rugs.

Since only Allah creates perfection, they purposely disrupt the uniform pattern to demonstrate that human creation is less than perfect.

Peace will come from a fresh metaphor in which the Arabs see Israel’s existence as Allah’s will.

Perceiving Israel as the necessary counter-pattern in the overall pattern of the Islamic world will usher in an era of peace.

The Arab world needs Israel to realize its own aesthetic and religious values. Perhaps art can succeed where politics has failed.