Benjamin Netanyahu Depicted With Noose in Controversial Jerusalem Art School Poster
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
JERUSALEM — A poster displayed at a Jerusalem art school showed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a noose hanging in front of him.
Israel Police have opened an incitement investigation into the poster hung up Monday in a stairwell at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design with the word “Rope” in capital letters at the bottom. It is a play on a 2008 presidential campaign poster of Barack Obama with the word HOPE at the bottom.
Eleven of the Netanyahu posters, in shades of gray and red, were hung up surrounding a poster of slain Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin reading “The Traitor” in English and Hebrew. The Rabin poster was circulated in 1995 days before he was assassinated. “This is incitement” was written on a piece of paper hung next to the poster installation.
The Netanyahu installation was taken down by Tuesday. Neither the identity of the artist who created the installation or who took it down are known.
A photo of one of the Netanyahu posters was first posted Monday on Facebook by a Likud party official, who questioned its suitability as art and wondered what the reaction would be if a left-wing leader’s face had been positioned next to the noose. It later emerged that the poster was part of the larger installation.
Israeli Culture and Sport Minister Miri Regev called for a halt in funding to the school.
“Freedom of art isn’t freedom to incite! It started with the statue in the city square and now we have a noose,” she said in a Facebook post, referring to the gold statue of Netanyahu placed last week in Rabin Square as political commentary.
“This is artistic talent to incite and murder. If it had been a picture of Boogie, there would already be arrests,” she said, using the nickname of opposition leader Isaac Herzog. The post then calls on Education Minister Naftali Bennett to “draw a line between art and incitement” and halt funding to Bezalel.
Herzog also condemned the poster.
“Freedom of expression is important and necessary, but it should not be used to incite toward harming public leaders from the right or the left,” he said.
A Bezalel spokesperson, Michal Turgeman, said in a statement sent to JTA that the work by one of its students “is a part of an ongoing conversation on what constitutes incitement through art.”
“The work in question is an expression by an individual student and in no way, shape, or form reflects the views of our institution, our faculty or administration,” Turgeman said. “We plan to cooperate fully in the ongoing investigation.”
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
