Fighting art with art: Combating the BDS movement with graffiti

The completed graffiti will be photographed and disseminated by the Foreign Ministry.

By GREER FAY CASHMAN
Updated: MARCH 16, 2017 16:12
A Palestinian boy walks past a drawing by British graffiti artist Banksy (photo credit: REUTERS)
A Palestinian boy walks past a drawing by British graffiti artist Banksy
(photo credit: REUTERS)
Anti-Israel graffiti in different parts of the world is one of the visual aspects of the BDS campaign.
In an effort to combat these messages internationally, renowned graffiti artist and actor Corin Nemec together with Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai and Jewish and Arab children will on Sunday create a new graffiti image on a wall of the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation .
Nemec, who is in Israel as the guest of the Foreign Ministry, will conceive an idea that speaks of the co-existence between Jews and Arabs that is intrinsic to the activities of the Peres Center and can be seen in sport, music, high tech, academia and other areas of endeavor in Israel.
The completed graffiti will be photographed and disseminated by the Foreign Ministry.
Graffiti has become an important political tool, as for instance in the recent ‘gallery’ of graffiti by British Street artist Banksy in his small Walled Off Hotel in Bethlehem (a word play on Waldorf) in which each of the rooms features pro-Palestine art work.
Banksy designed seven of the ten bedrooms himself. The hotel overlooks a pile of rubble and is adjacent to a graffiti covered wall leading to the West Bank and is advertised as having the worst view in the world.
Welcome to the wall: artist Banksy opens Bethlehem hotel (credit: REUTERS)
The hotel received enormous publicity abroad, and the best way to combat its effect is to produce equally eye-catching graffiti that conveys the Israeli rather than the Palestinian narrative.