Housed until recently in a 6000-square-foot gallery space at the Station Museum in Houston, �Made in Palestine� includes a rendering of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon using an American matchbook to torture a Palestinian child, as well as an installation memorializing Palestinian �martyrs� of the intifada. Literature accompanying the exhibit refers to Israel�s independence day as �Al Nakba,� or the catastrophe, and criticizes �the role of the United States in encouraging Israel�s ongoing aggression.�

I say, bring it on. Lots of Jews in Manhattan are available for protests now that we aren't pre-occupied by the election.

Some bloggers over the past few years have expressed a hope that America would reprise its traditional role as a haven from oppression for Jews from an increasingly antisemitic Europe. Well, here they come:

Stern College Associate Dean Ethel Orlian sees a pattern in the influx of French applicants to YU. �When Jews left Iran, we had a large number of Iranian students,� Orlian said. �When Jews left the Soviet Union, it was Russian students. Now we have a new group � French students, even if their situation is less immediate� than their counterparts from Iran and the FSU.

Nowhere perhaps is the French revolution more apparent than at Yabne, Paris� largest Jewish high school. More than a third of the school�s 140 seniors are taking an extracurricular class designed to prepare them for the TOEFL, the English language proficiency test required of foreign students applying to American universities. Many of the students trying to polish their English plan to apply to YU, said Yabne Principal Elihaou Bellahsen. �It�s as if the Atlantic Ocean disappeared,� he said.

Will English Jews be the next wave? Melanie Phillips reports on a Jew-hating conference in London next week, and notes that Jack Straw laid a wreath on Arafat's grave.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was scheduled to have met Mr Straw on Wednesday but cancelled the meeting. Mr Sharon's office said he was suffering from a sore throat and had difficulty speaking. The same reason was given for the cancellation of another meeting with Mr Straw, due to have taken place on Thursday.

Heh.

Speaking of the conflict Mr Straw said: "Its effect is so powerful, not just in the Middle East but around the whole Islamic world, that solving it satisfactorily would be a huge prize. It is the engine of so much trouble around the world."

That's what they want you to believe, all right.

An exhibit of Russian art leaves the antisemitic items in the closet, but collectors find them anyway:

"There are two kinds of collectors for this kind of stuff," explained Stuart Pivar, a renowned collector who, along with Andy Warhol, started the New York Academy of Art, "neo-Nazis and Jews."

. . . "Right after the Holocaust, stuff like this was basically considered pornography," said Jerry Faivish, a Toronto attorney who collects anti-Jewish art. "The attitude from many people was, 'How can you keep these? They should be burned.'" In the time it took for more critical perspectives to develop, such imagery became more rare � as did survivors � amplifying the resonance of Nazi-era anti-Jewish artifacts, especially in the face of Holocaust denials. "You have to collect it just to show it's real," Faivish said. "To show that it really happened."