By BENJAMIN WEINTHALisrael map protest 311(photo credit: Honestly Concerned)
BERLIN – The Danish street art duo “Surrend” started to blanket selected Berlin neighborhoods on Wednesday with maps of the Middle East in which the State of Israel does not appear, with the term “Final Solution” at the top.According to critics, the artists, Jan Egesborg and Pia Bertelsen, are stoking genocidal anti-Semitism with their provocative “art in hot spots” tactics, by employing Nazi terminology.Klaus Wowereit, the Social Democratic Party mayor of Berlin, told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday that “there cannot be any doubt regarding Israel’s right to exist. This form of satire is not what I like.”Dr. Shimon Samuels, head of the international department of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Paris, told the Post that the “artists should be sued for genocidal incitement,” and that they are “talking like Ahmadinejad.”It is unclear if the Berlin public prosecutor will invoke Germany’s anti-hate law barring incitement to violence against minority groups. The exhibit’s call to abolish Israel also meets the European Union’s definition of anti-Semitism, outlining a rejection of Israel’s right to exist as a modern expression of Jew-hatred.The Austrian news outlet Vienna Online and the English-language Copenhagen Post reported that Egesborg identifies himself as a Jew, and regards Israel as a “historical mistake.”The artists renamed the Jewish state “Ramallah” on the maps.“As a Jew, I always thought it was problematic that Israel was built on stolen land. The way the Israeli state treats the Palestinians today is terrible. There is no other answer but for the Jews of Israel to find a new homeland, perhaps in the USA, Germany or Denmark,” Egesborg said.Lala Süsskind, the president of Berlin’s Jewish community, told the Jerusalem Post that the “artistic group Surrend is traditionally provocative. With this action the founder Jan Egesborg stresses for first time that he needs, as a Jew, to comment on the Israeli-Palestinian situation. He not only denies Israel’s right to exist on the poster but in interviews strips Israel’s of its right to exist. His statement can no longer be assessed as ‘artistic provocation’ but as a political statement. The statements of a Jewish artist have crossed the line into anti-Semitism, which we as a Jewish community cannot accept.”In an e-mail to the Jerusalem Post, Dr. Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress, wrote, “This so-called art is outrageous on so many levels. Firstly, it seeks to obliterate the existence of a United Nations member-state and the nation-state of the Jewish people.
“Secondly, by using the term “Final Solution,” this group is intentionally belittling the extermination of 6 million Jews and is exercising a form of Holocaust denial. This exhibit is according to all criteria deeply anti-Semitic. Examples like this only emphasis the need for broader legislation against such hateful anti-Semitic expressions.“This is another example of how the systematic delegitimization of the State of Israel is absolutely anti-Semitic, and no false cries of freedom of speech can justify it,” Kantor said.Egesborg did not reply to a Jerusalem Post e-mail query.Accordingto media reports, the Danes said that their maps will be plastered inthe Berlin neighborhoods of Prenzlauer Berg, Mitte and Kreuzberg, adiverse area with a large German-Turkish population.Observerssaid the timing of the anti-Israeli action coincides with InternationalWorkers Day on May 1 and will resonate with both leftist and neo-Nazigroups that mount annual protests against the German government on theholiday. It is unclear if the Danish artists staged their action togarner support from leftist and extreme right-wing haters of Israel.
