Monday, May 11, 2009
JTA: Gallery parts ways with artist over politics
TORONTO -- A leading Toronto Jewish community-funded art gallery severed its ties to an exhibit over the artist's political associations concerning Israel.
The Koffler Centre of the Arts announced Friday that it was disassociating itself from an art installation titled "Each hand as they are called," about life in the one-time Toronto Jewish neighborhood of Kensington Market, because of artist Reena Katz's politics.
A statement on the UJA-funded Koffler Centre's Web site said it recently learned of Katz's "public support for and association with Israel Apartheid Week, which rejects the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state and promotes historically inaccurate comparisons between contemporary Israel and apartheid South Africa in order to delegitimize Israel."
The center "will not associate with an artist who publicly advocates the extinction of Israel as a Jewish state. The Koffler considers the existence and well-being of Israel as a Jewish state to be one of its core values."
"Therefore, the Koffler Centre of the Arts is disassociating itself from the artist and will not promote the exhibition on its Web site or through any other advertising from this point forward."
Katz, 33, told the Toronto Star that she was "shocked. I'm disgusted" with the decision.
"What they claim that I have said is not at all what I've said. I have said that I'm an anti-Zionist Jew. So they are conflating the State of Israel with Zionism [sic: Judaism -S]," she said. "I'm speaking to an ideology when I speak about Zionism. They're speaking about a Jewish state."...
They should have had her show her stuff in the local MAS outlet in the first place, but this is the next best thing. Separating Zionism (the physical manifestation of a spiritual yearning shared by the vast majority of Jews -- and even those who don't agree with it would never ally themselves with the forces that seek those Jews' destruction) from Judaism is nothing but a cover for those with a desire for destruction, especially now that a Jewish State is a reality. No Jewish organization should be compelled to respect it, or pretend that nominal Jews who push this point of view haven't consciously separated themselves from the community.
Actually, it sounds to me as though the artist was represented fairly accurately.
As some of us get tired of repeating, Zionism is the national movement for a Jewish state called Israel. Once it was the movement to create such a state; then it became the movement to promote the state and keep it alive and thriving.
Someone who wants Israel destroyed IS an anti-Zionist, in other words, and vice versa.
Let me add: anti-Zionism is not necessarily antisemitism. If you hate Israel for being a Jewish state, and hate Saudi Arabia equally for being a Muslim state, that's not hypocritical, nor antisemitic -- particularly if you recognize that Israelis have far more freedom of religion than Saudis do. But if you deny the right of Jews to have their own state, and see nothing wrong with Muslim states or Catholic states or Anglican states... that IS antisemitic.
Just sayin'.
respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline,
a proud Zionist