Scathing anti-Semitism pervades ‘Holey Land’ exhibition in Sweden

A poster of an exhibition at the Swedish Christian Study Center portraying Israelis as rats and the West Bank as cheese.

By Anna Ekström
1/4/2012

Art exhibition at Stockholm church accuses Jews and Israel of being inherently destructive.

A picture of a Bible converted into a tank hangs before my eyes. The book with its cannon is on a rampage. No enemy can be seen. In the background is a meandering wall: the West Bank barrier.

I am visiting an art exhibition called “The Holy Land – The Holey Land” in Immanuelskyrkan, a church in Stockholm, and I am astonished. Anti-Israel propaganda is common, but this is something else. The artist accuses Judaism of being inherently destructive.

The organizer of the exhibition is the Swedish Christian Study Center, a non-governmental organization with an office in Jerusalem. Before the event, the Simon Wiesenthal Center protested the Christian organization’s publicity poster, which portrays Israelis as rats and the West Bank as cheese. While that cartoon was withdrawn, the Wiesenthal Center’s gesture did not make any difference.

Artists Stefan Sjoblom’s and Larz Lindqvists’ imagery is a fusion of anti-Jewish myths from Christianity, Nazism, the Left and Islamism. Both artists are pastors in the Mission Covenant Church of Sweden, and Sjoblom also works as a prison pastor. Meanwhile, Yusuf Aydin, spokesman for the Byzantine and Oriental Orthodox churches in Sweden, has written a letter of protest in which he declares his intention to review the duo’s relations with the SCSC. The NGO has several member churches, including the Catholic Church. Fredrik Emanuelsson, spokesman for the Roman Catholic diocese in Stockholm, tells me that the Church has committed itself to fighting anti-Semitism. He will inform himself about the context, he says.

The painting “Golden parachute” alludes to both greed and dishonest covenants. With his black hat as his parachute, the huge dark Jew is descending toward land. In other pictures, the effect of the influence of the mythical Jew is all too apparent: Jesus weeps tears of blood over the riches of Israel and the trees of Palestine are dead. A bank note cast in concrete – the wall again – carries the words “Bank of Sweden”, “false “and “wallet”.

Another black hat covers one of Jerusalem’s city gates. The stone face has soulless eyes and the gate is its mouth. “The Jew” has devoured the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the only colorful object in the picture. As a more materialist sort of gangster, the stereotypical Jew appears in a black hat, black sunglasses, a gun belt and a Magen David instead of a sheriff’s star – or the yellow star.

The imagery recalls an international conference on Saint John Chrysostom hosted by the SCSC in 2008. Chrysostom wrote eight homilies against the Jews. He accused the Jews of being evil ravagers, bandits, murderers and devil worshipers, and he declared eternal holy war on the Jewish people.

The pictures repeat Chrysostom’s accusations, only the devil is missing; Satan has gone out of fashion and been replaced by the Nazi. In the darkest picture of them all, “Our god is a mighty fortress,” the victims and the perpetrators of the Holocaust are merged into an idol and its worshippers. At the center is a watchtower built of wall segments. One of the soldiers on guard wears a Nazi style officer’s cap. The tower is also a bomb and a crematorium. Its lighted fuse rises from a chimney. Soldiers with helmets and guns are praying to the idol. Barbed-wire letters compose the words ”God ” and ”Security.”

Jewish self-defense is as evil as the Holocaust and will kill the Zionists who, having turned away from God, are guilty of the holocaust to come, and perhaps of the Holocaust that was, the picture tells me. It reminds me of a chilling report by the Washington Post in 2005, which quoted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calling the Holocaust a myth. “They (the Jews) have created a myth in the name of the Holocaust and consider it above God, religion and the prophets,” Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying.

I turn back to the walls of this Stockholm church and what do I find? Israeli flags without Stars of David. The white field is clean; it is Judenrein and “Zionistenrein.”

As though all this were not enough, an image of Joseph, Mary and Jesus as Palestinian refugees perpetuates the myths of deicide and child-killing. A sad, long line of refugees march alongside a wall with barbed wire and a watchtower. It reminds me of concentration camps. Graffiti on the wall behind the holy family says “refugees since [no date].” It is as though human beings, perhaps humanity, have been running away from the Jews since Jesus was born. The artist robs the Jews and the Christians of their Jewish history, and, alluding to the flight from King Herod, he accuses the Jews of both infanticide and the intention to kill God.

Naim Ateek, president of the SCSC’s Palestinian partner Sabeel and co-organizer of an upcoming conference in Bethlehem on the Kairos Palestine Document, has produced a similar fusion of the myths of deicide and genocide. ”Jesus is on the cross again with thousands of crucified Palestinians around him… The Israeli government crucifixion system is operating daily,” he wrote in Sabeel’s Easter message 2001.

My lasting impression of the Holey Land exhibition is that it unveils the anti-Semitic nature of what many call “criticism of Israel.” Unfortunately, I think most visitors fail to recognize that their perceptions of Jews as evil and mythical characters, actually is racial hatred. They have become too used to identifying Israel-bashing as goodness. No wonder the exhibition guestbook is full of messages by visitors who were grateful the SCSC was spreading a message of peace, love and understanding.

Anna Ekström is a freelance journalist based in Sweden, who writes for various publications including the Jewish Chronicle.

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