7/10/2023 & the aftermath: cultural antisemitism?
featuring Maya Amrami and Marc Provisor
The unexpected attack on Israel by the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas on 7 October 2023 was described by The Economist as the bloodiest carnage in Israel’s history; “more Jews were killed on October 7th than on any day since the Holocaust.” Recent reports estimated that 1200 people in Israel were killed on that day, with over 230 men, women and children abducted and taken as hostages.
Numerous journalists worldwide, including BBC News and The Guardian, have since reported on the acts of extreme violence committed by Hamas that day against Israeli Jews, Israeli Arabs, foreign workers and visitors, which have been described as medieval in nature. Mainstream news outlets have published a photo of a burnt baby and reported on Hamas terrorists shooting the dead bodies of civilians in cars, the beheading of a body with a hoe, burnt corpses thrown in a dumpster and horrific accounts of rape and sexual violence.
The number of anti-Semitic hate crimes across the world has risen since the 7 October terror attack. Alarmingly, the unholy alliance between leftists and Islamists has further stoked hatred against Israel and Jews in the West. The Anti-Defamation League reported a 337% rise in anti-Semitic incidents in the USA, the London police reported an annual increase of 1,353% in the UK, while in Germany anti-Semitic incidents rose by 320%.
However, within this context, arts organisations and artists have been alarmingly silent about terrorism and the barbaric nature of the attacks. Instead, many have denounced Israel for daring to defend itself; they adopt a position of solidarity with Palestinians “all over the world, who are experiencing a genocide and collective punishment within an apartheid regime,” while remaining staunchly silent about Hamas and other terror groups who initiated the attack on Israel; a multiracial, multi-ethnic democratic modern nation-state.
While Pro-Palestinian demonstrations have been much smaller in Poland compared to the UK, the USA and other parts of Europe, the common chant, “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” has become the chant for the vast majority of protesters. It is an explicit call for the complete dismantling or destruction of Israel. The publicly funded art world in the UK seem to have become a site for anti-Israeli sentiment without push-back, counterpoint or critique. Workers at London’s renowned centre for experimental art – the ICA – went on strike, calling for a complete boycott of Israeli arts and culture; nearly 1,850 artists in the UK signed an open letter also calling for a boycott against professional invitations to Israel and funding from Israeli institutions.
In Poland, artist-activists are vocal and influential in the global art world, yet they remain a small minority in representing Poland’s citizenry. In 2021, when there was an outcry from left-leaning artist-activists forming part of the Everyday Forms of Political Resistance exhibition by pro-Palestine artists at the Ujazdowski Castle, only a few hundred protesters turned up, but the intolerance towards Israeli, Jewish and non-conforming artists of (former)-Muslim/Middle East descent was clearly evident. They were objecting to the adjacent Political Art exhibition, describing the artworks on display as distasteful and promoting “fascist attitudes.” In a recent interview, Polish artist Joanna Rajkowska made a fantastical, false narrative leap, exploring “the entwinements between Jewish suffering in Poland and Palestinian suffering in Israel,” implying that Israel is an ethno-national state.
Intersectional and identity politics claim to be inclusive; we see Queers for Palestine marching with homophobic Islamists at demonstrations, over 240 queer artists signed an open letter calling for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, not for an end to Hamas’s Islamic terrorism. This fantasy of inclusivity deliberately overlooks the fact that same-sex activity is illegal in Gaza and carries a maximum penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment. Meanwhile, Israel is accused of “pink-washing” where same-sex relations and civil partnerships are legal. Furthermore, Intersectional Feminism has failed to support the female victims of Hamas’s brutal acts of sexual violence and rape. Israel is portrayed as a colonial, white-settler Zionist state, thus erasing the presence of the 21% ethnic Arabs who are citizens with full democratic rights and the majority Mizrahi Israeli Jews of Middle Eastern and North African descent. Why do artist-activists view Israel through a decolonial, queer, Marxist, critical race theory lens, when the reality belies these perspectives? Are these calls and protests justified while Hamas remains in power in Gaza, funded by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps? Why are artists not making this connection?
The French intellectual and philosopher, Alain Finkielkraut, whose Polish-Jewish father survived the Auschwitz concentration camp, recently spoke about his disillusionment with the contemporary left, and his observation that wokeism is worse than communism, because it aligns itself with Islamism and is shaping the present and future elite:
"Wokeism is the installation of hatred of the West in the heart of the West. And in this perspective, Israel is the center that bundles all the crimes, all the atrocities, all the abominations of the West.”
There are many perspectives in this war, but the art world has been predominantly one-sided and partial. We hope you will join us and our guest speakers to openly and freely discuss what it means to live in an era of terror and war.
