The mayor of Ramat Gan, Carmel Shama HaCohen, opposes a work of art on display in a museum in his city.
A few days after the reopening of the Ramat Gan Museum, a work called "Jerusalem" by the artist David Rib is controversial and that Emma Hacohen even called on Facebook to remove it.
This is because it includes, next to a picture of an ultra-Orthodox person praying in front of the Western Wall, the captions "Jerusalem of gold" and "Jerusalem of shit".
In a post on his Facebook page, he wrote that her mother "Freedom of expression is the soul of our nose, until he threatens to become the freedom of temptation and contempt. Probably where he begins to get an aroma of racism. Jerusalem is a symbol. It is in the heart of every Jew Could bear the injury and stopped visiting the museum because of this work.Creepy just to think what we would have felt and done if this work had been in a museum in Poland, Germany or France.
"Ramat Gan regrets its flag of sane and balanced liberalism, but not offensive and certainly not suicidal. Everyone who has visited has seen that the exhibition has quite a few provocative works, but evokes feelings of debate without degrading any national symbol, sanctuary or sector."
According to him, the work is "crossing a border from legitimate criticism to blatant and degrading criticism. Ramat Gan did not build a museum for a huge sum and will not subsidize it every year so that its children and others will be exposed to the language of sewers."
Along with his opinion on the subject, the mayor asked its residents to decide the fate of the work in a survey he posted on the Facebook page.
Shama Hacohen's deputy, Roi Barzilai, who also serves as the museum's chairman, vehemently opposes the removal of the work. "The man who created this image is David Reeb, one of the well-known artists working today," says Barzilai.
It creates on the basis of images from political reality.
Jerusalem is not perfect, never was, neither in the Middle Ages nor today.
Meir Ariel was the first to write 'Jerusalem of Iron and Lead and Bereavement' as a contrasting analogy to Naomi Shemer.
Jerusalem is not shit just as much as it is neither gold.
"David Reeb's work is a humorous wink that refers to the way in which certain images are treated with glorification, for example the image of the worshiper."
Ramat Gan Museum,
Advocate Dan Yakir of the Association for Civil Rights addressed a letter to Shama stating that "the constitutional right to freedom of expression requires granting independence to the cultural institution in general, and to the artistic content raised within it in particular. "I agree and strongly oppose the removal of the work. Your decision is an improper political intervention in the artistic content displayed in the museum. Even if the mayor had some authority in the matter, the decision to remove the work was wrong in itself, in that it does not strike the right balance between freedom of expression and feelings.
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