I thought, and I wasn't the only one, that all the swords had been unsheathed. We read the words painted on the protesters' placards, calling for Prime Minister Netanyahu's resignation, and some heard cruder calls regarding the prime minister. How did the news put it? Police are investigating, sweeps for inciters are ongoing, including online.
The people investigating the incitement obviously won't go to Rabin Square in Tel Aviv, where an installation has been erected that makes a pretense of recreating the Last Supper. The guest of honor at the recreation in the square is a Netanyahu doll. "The Last Supper" is an art installation, the work of the productive artist Itay Zalait.
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But his work in Rabin Square just makes me angry, and sad. Angry because I have to understand the recreation as representing the last stop before the main figure is crucified, the evil tidings that some hope will befall Netanyahu, heaven forbid. The name given to the work says it all: the last supper. And "last" is the key word that describes the installation and its themes. The artist denies the association that leapt to my mind, and told Haaretz that the work represents the "last supper" of democracy, adding, "Art installations cannot lead to violence."
If only his prediction remains accurate. I'm not sure it will. After the assassination of the late Yitzhak Rabin, in the square that now bears his name, the warning was often repeated that "words can kill." That strengthened the assassin Yigal Amir's claims that he had been "inspired" by rabbis. But why can only words kill? Why can't imagery kill, especially when it is set up in a place where a terrible murder has already taken place? Can't it be understood as the end of the Netanyahu doll's life?
Some will say, that is a biased, twisted interpretation of the work. But isn't that the power of art – that everything is in the eye of the beholder, as well as how to interpret it? It's a fact, the artist himself explained what his intentions had been, thereby launching new interpretations.
Israel Prize-winning photographer Alex Libek lent more artistic material to the protests. A few decades ago, Libek photographed Netanyahu during a speech with his arm raised, one of the hallmarks of the mass rallies held by Hitler. Libek chose one or two seconds in which his lens had captured a momentary gesture by Netanyahu. The picture was kept under wraps for 30 years, but Libek has now seen fit to pull it out again at a gallery in Herzliya. This photograph, of his entire oeuvre, at this time of all times.
Yes, an art installation and the photograph – and they aren't the only things – have been drafted into the semiotic war in a collective attempt to stain Netanyahu's image, to fan the flames of negative sentiment toward him, and eventually to oust him from power.
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