We never found the elusive British guerrilla artist who goes by the name of Banksy. He was long gone.

But going back to Bethlehem this weekend, we run across one of the wall artists—Ron English. He’s the blond, bearded chap in the photograph at the bottom of the ladder, hanging a reproduction of his “Grade School Guernica.” (to find out more about Ron English, go to his website at http://www.popaganda.com/)





Pop artist Ron English (under the ladder) and assistant hang "Grade School Guernica" on the Wall in Bethlehem. (Photo courtesy Yasmine Perni)

Ron and his assistant (I didn’t get his name) assured me they were having a wonderful time on this, their first visit to Israel/Palestine.


From the comments on this blog, I can tell some people love the wall artists, while others clearly despise them. And while some might think that the love is on one side of the wall and the hate the other, think again.

“They are so ugly,” Nasrat, a Bethlehem resident told me at a friend’s birthday party the other night. “I live right next to the wall, and saw someone painting on it. I shouted at them to go away. Do they think they will make the wall more beautiful by painting on it?”

Gilad, on the other hand, is a big fan. At a party the other night (yes, reporters do have social lives, and this is a very social time of year), Gilad, a skinny, bearded Israeli peace activist, explained how he was planning to hire a pick-up truck and haul away Banksy’s depiction of a rat with a slingshot stencilled on a slab on concrete. The slab is right beneath a paint-spattered guard tower in a section of the wall that juts inside Bethlehem, an area that is technically illegal for Israelis to enter.



Will this rat show up on Ebay? (Courtesy: Yasmine Perni)

“I’m sure I could sell it on Ebay for more than two-hundred thousand dollars,” he said, pointing out that at his current NGO wage that would be well over ten times his annual salary. Even peace activists yearn for creature comforts, I guess.

From CNN's Ben Wedeman