New Banksy mural portrays Steve Jobs as a refugee
The British street artist known as Banksy has struck again. This time, a new piece portraying Apple founder Steve Jobs as a refugee adorns a wall in a migrant camp in Calais, France.
The “Jungle,” as the refugee camp in Calais has come to be known is an improvised camp where hundreds of migrants have set up tents in hopes they can cross the English Channel and into the U.K.
Banksy’s design shows Jobs in his well-known attire of jeans and a black turtleneck, carrying an original Mac computer in one hand and cloth sack slung over his shoulder. On his website, Banksy captioned his new work: “the son of a migrant from Syria.”
Steve Jobs was adopted, but his biological father, Abdul Fattah Jandali, was born and raised in Homs, Syria, a city that has been devastated in the war.
The Dubai-based news site Al Arabiya reports that Jandali, born in 1931, moved to Lebanon when he turned 18 to study at the American University of Beirut. In 1954, Jandali moved to the U.S. because of political unrest in Lebanon. After the terrorist attacks in Paris last month, people on Twitter began sharing the fact that Jobs’ father was a migrant from Syria.
It is unclear whether Jandali would be characterized as a refugee or migrant under current United Nations standards. The UN Refugee agency defines a refugee as a person fleeing armed conflict or persecution. Migrants “choose to move not because of a direct threat of persecution or death, but mainly to improve their lives by finding work, or in some cases for education, family reunion, or other reasons.”
This isn’t the first time Banksy has put his mark on the “Jungle.” Banksy previously installed in the camp a sign that read “Dismal aid,” a twist on the “Dismaland” exhibition he mounted in Somerset, England, this year.
