BDS Versus Modern Art | Jewish and Israel news Algemeiner.com
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An anti-Semitic caricature on display at the Documenta art festival in Germany. The organizers of the exhibition covered the kippah worn by the figure on the left with black tape. Photo: Screenshot
JNS.org – BDS appears here as a foil for contemporary art. BDS subverts modernity’s claims to autonomy and emancipatory influence, fixating on its meanings in ways that might infuriate artists, and leaving it only to refusal: either denying guilt or rejecting the plea of Palestinian civil society. At this point, the latter option should be unthinkable.”
These jargon-laden sentences taken from an article written by Vijay Masharani in art world publication X-tra, probably require a translation. Masharan’s argument is that the campaign to subject Israel to “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” (BDS) as a prelude to its ultimate elimination—a campaign to which he offers his full support—is clearly at odds with core values. of artistic production. Arguing that “the prized qualities of art—its unspokenness, openness, dialogism, tolerance, and ambiguity—make it ripe for an amatory, unfettered relationship with a hegemonic power” (that is, the state of Israel), Masharani urges artists to litter. They focus on nuance and complexity by taking control of politics. As he says, they have a choice: oppression or solidarity. To reject the BDS campaign is to join the oppression of Palestinians, a crime so great that any talk of artistic independence from political demands seems repugnant.
Along with university campuses and leftist NGOs, the world of art and culture has been quite susceptible to the appeals of the BDS campaign over the past 20 years. As a rule of thumb, BDS is usually found on the progressive left, whose values often fit neatly into the concerns of contemporary artists. While neo-Nazis and white supremacists have expressed support for BDS, this is largely a secondary demand, driven by their racial, conspiracy-fueled hatred of Jews in general; by contrast, on the far left, agitation against Zionism and the Jewish state, expressed in solidarity with the oppressed Palestinians, often serves as a gateway to more traditional forms of anti-Semitism.
This reality was demonstrated almost perfectly at the Documenta festival of contemporary art in Germany earlier this year. The 2022 edition of the festival, held every five years in the city of Kassel, is curated by an Indonesian artist collective called ruangrupa, many of whose members are affiliated with the BDS campaign. During the festival, which did not feature any Israeli artists, let alone Jewish or Israeli-themed works, visitors were confronted with crudely anti-Semitic artworks almost weekly. Among the more offensive exhibits was a large mural installed in the center of Kassel entitled “The Right of the People”. It depicted a rogues’ gallery of figures ostensibly associated with Indonesia’s Suharto dictatorship, including an Orthodox Jew with a hooked nose and a fedora hat embossed with the letters “SS” and an Israeli soldier with a pig’s face and helmet. marked with the word “Mossad”. Other exhibits included a triptych featuring a kippah-wearing figure offering large bags full of cash, and a brochure celebrating Algerian women’s solidarity with the Palestinians and showing nude anti-Semitic caricatures of IDF soldiers.
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December 16, 2022 at 9:57 am
The toxic hammer politics of BDS—the “with us or against us” choice offered by Masharan and his ilk—means that the path from calling for the removal of Israel to expressing hostility toward Jews, especially when those Jews support a Jewish state in which they do not themselves live, is a fairly straightforward one . The Documenta festival proved it, as did a new initiative in Finland that targets Helsinki’s main museum of contemporary art because of its connections to an Israeli philanthropist.
Last week, a group of 200 Finnish artists signed a statement promising to “refuse to sell our work and our art” to Kiam, the contemporary art museum in Helsinki, as long as it maintains ties to the Zabludowicz Art Trust, an initiative of Chaim Poju. Zabludowicz, a London-based billionaire with dual citizenship of Finland and Israel.
“Our position is based on the fact that organizations funded by Chaim ‘Poju’ Zabludowicz support the apartheid regime imposed by the State of Israel on Palestine and the Palestinian people,” the statement said.
Zabludowicz, who made his fortune through Israeli defense contractor Soltan Systems, has courted controversy in the past, particularly in the UK, where his support for the pro-Israel advocacy group BICOM led to all sorts of vile complaints against obscure “Israeli weapons”. distributor.” His background and wealth have made him an ideal target for the BDS movement, which takes the basic facts of his biography and filters them through the lens of anti-Zionist ideology. Of course, neither the Finnish artists’ statement nor the British “BDZ” (Boycott Divest Zabludowicz) campaign mentions that their His bete noir would be a Jew.We’re in pure dog-hoax territory here, yet we’re left with the overwhelming impression of a shady Jewish businessman with great wealth who washes his reputation and that of the state of Israel by manipulating contemporary artists.
As Helsinki’s Lutheran bishop Teemu Laajasalo told Helsingin sanomat newspaper news magazine in response to the artist’s statement: “If an individual Jew is held responsible for the actions of the state of Israel, or if an individual Jew is forbidden to support Israel, or if the state of Israel is demanded to be something other than in other democratic states, we are guilty of anti-Semitism. Although this argument is justified, the fact that we hear it again, shows how bitterly polarized this debate is, those who accept Masharan’s view that abandoning the boycott is “unthinkable” closes themselves off from any consideration that their position might be anti-Semitic.
A convincing answer therefore does not ignore the importance of good arguments, but should also focus on actions against the boycott in practice. Just as BDS supporters demand that artists should boycott Israeli galleries and philanthropists, its opponents should push for a ban on government funding for any exhibition or festival – Documenta, for example – that supports the BDS campaign or bans Israeli artists on that basis. of their nationality. The fight against anti-Semitism and the integrity of artistic independence demand nothing less.
Ben Cohen is a New York-based journalist and author who writes a weekly column on Jewish and international affairs for JNS.