White from head to toe, dressed in full combat gear he patrols the streets of Jerusalem, Palestinian and Israeli settlements: Yehuda Brown, a former Israeli soldier turned artist, is performing an ongoing piece entitled The White Soldier. The stark monochromatic brightness of his appearance raises strikingly varied reactions from the people he meets. The white can symbolize a range of ideas, from purity to surrender or even a deathly angel; while the charged image of a soldier can correlate to “control, sovereignty, security and oppression.” It’s a striking cause for discourse about the collision, both social and militarily, between the Palestinian and Israeli world.
