Nissan Rilov

Nissan Rilov
Born	1918
Died	March 10, 2007 Paris
Occupation	Artist

Nissan Rilov (1918 - 2007) was an Israeli painter and one of the first and few children to live in Nahalal (est. 1921), the first Zionist moshav in Palestine.^[1]

Rilov served in the Special Night Squads (SNS), the Haganah, and the British Army during World War II. After a series of experiences culminating in his refusal to obey an order to shoot, which resulted in his expulsion from the Haganah, Rilov eventually emigrated to Paris, having lost faith in Zionism. There, he pursued a successful artistic career, and was active in supporting the Palestinian struggle for independence.^[1]

Early life

A childhood friend of Moshe Dayan, Rilov was also the boyfriend of poetess Hana Senesh when she studied at the Agricultural College for Girls there.^[1]

Military career

During the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine against British rule, Rilov joined the Special Night Squads (SNS) led by British Army officer Charles Orde Wingate; mobile squads that moved at night into Palestinian villages to preempt their attacks on the oil pipeline from Kirkuk in Iraq to Haifa in Palestine.^[1]

Under Wingate's command, Rilov witnessed acts of cruelty towards Palestinian villagers. Rilov soon joined the Haganah, but after a Haganah commander ordered him to shoot an old peasant from the village of Ma'alul picking vegetables on the lands he had once worked (that had been sold to Nahalal by absentee Arab owners), Rilov refused, saying: "I don't shoot old people". ^[1]

Court-martialled, expelled from the Haganah, and ex-communicated by his family and friends, Rilov left Nahalal and moved to Tel Aviv where joined the Palestine Communist Party. During World War II, he joined and fought for the British Army.^[1]

Artistic career

After the war's end, he returned to study painting in the school of Avni. In the early 1950s, he emigrated to Paris, where he worked as a builder and studied painting. Rilov used a unique technique to produce collages of torn-up painted sheets, meeting with great success.^[1]

Support for Palestinians

In a 1984 France 3 documentary on the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, Rilov described how he also helped in the expulsion of local Palestinians as early as 1936:

"In one day, in order to start building [our homes] on this land, with bulldozers that existed then, primitive bulldozers unlike the ones that exist now, and with tractors, we destroyed the villages and kicked out all the Arabs out, and I remember something that has always struck me. It was how the children and the women threw themselves in front of the tractors and refused to leave. There was a strong resistance of the Palestinians against the destruction of their villages, and that had really touched me."^[2]

During the first Intifada, Rilov staged an art exhibition, "Stones", to honour Palestinian peasant women who threw stones.^[1]

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h} Akiva Orr (13 March 2007). "Homage to Nissan Rilov (1918 - 2007)". The Region. http://www.hagada.org.il/eng/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=126. Retrieved 2007-12-09. 
2. ^ Faycal Falaky (200). "The Oppressive Victim". G21:The World's Magazine. http://g21.net/midE1.htm. Retrieved 2007-12-09.