An Anti-Semitic Exhibit by the World’s Most Celebrated Graffiti Artist https://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/israel-zionism/2018/05/an-anti-semitic-exhibit-by-the-worlds-most-celebrated-graffiti-artist/

May 11, 2018 | David Collier
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In 2017, the “Walled-Off Hotel” opened in Bethlehem, just a few feet from the security fence that runs through the West Bank. Its owner, the anonymous British “street artist” known as Banksy, has decorated it with his own artwork, making the entire hotel an exercise in fake-war-crimes kitsch. David Collier reports on his visit to the hotel:

On the one side, [the hotel] can be viewed as an obscene gimmick. A privileged activist gaining publicity through a stunt that objectifies people immersed in a real-world tragedy. On the other are the Jews, who are thoroughly demonized by the false narrative presented inside. Jews become alien god-killers, too greedy and racist to open their arms to a peaceful downtrodden people. In the middle are the useful idiots: ignorant tourists who come to the hotel, see the exhibits, and then leave slightly more radicalized than they were before they came. . . .

Inside the [hotel’s] museum are several videos. The most important one [purports to] place the conflict into context. . . . It is difficult to overstate the historical distortion in the video. . . . It completely denies Jewish history in the land and presents Jews as alien invaders. . . .

Throughout the museum, there is use of Holocaust imagery, part of an ongoing strategy of equating the results of the 1947-48 conflict with the Holocaust. . . . [One piece] suggests Israelis kill for money, Arabs die just so Israelis can test weapons, and the conflict only [exists] so that Jewish business can thrive. . . . Everywhere you look is the image of a brutal Holocaust committed by money-grabbing Jews against a defenseless and helpless population. . . . [This is not to mention the] classic anti-Semitic imagery [of] Jews as god-killers, [found in] an image of a Christlike figure with a red-dot sight on his forehead. . . .

[T]he truth is that . . . far more hate went into building the exhibits within the hotel than went into building the defensive wall it was designed to protest. One was designed to save lives, the other only sets out to demonize a people.

Read more on Beyond the Great Divide: http://david-collier.com/banksy-bethlehem/