French institute removes photo of ‘Netanyahu’ with bloody hands
Government-funded Arab cultural center used picture to promote a debate this week titled ‘Stranglehold on Israel. Netanyahu or the end of the Zionist dream’
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Following protests, a French government institute devoted to promoting Arab culture removed from its website a picture depicting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu holding up bloody hands.
The picture, showing protesters wearing Netanyahu masks at a rally while holding up their red painted palms, was featured this month on the Arab World Institute’s website. It advertised a January 3 debate in Paris titled: “Stranglehold on Israel. Netanyahu or the end of the Zionist dream.”
Aliza Bin Noun, Israel’s ambassador to France, condemned the image and the text.
“Scandalous and intolerable how a public institute disseminates such defamatory visuals, assisting the vilification of Israel to advertise a so-called ‘debate,’ which is biased to begin with,” she wrote on Twitter. The institute, she added, “has crossed the border of objective criticism and is making itself guilty of incitement.”
Intolérable et scandaleux qu’un institut public diffuse de tels visuels diffamatoires et attisant la détestation d’#Israël pour présenter un soi-disant “débat” déjà à charge. L’@imarabe a franchi la limite de la critique objective et se rend coupable d’incitation à la haine pic.twitter.com/QyRodUFxyf
— Aliza Bin Noun (@AlizaBinNoun) December 28, 2018
The picture was removed over the weekend following her criticism and that of B’nai B’rith France leader Philippe Meyer. He wrote on Twitter: “An institution funded by taxpayers’ money cannot propagate anti-Zionist hatred, which feeds anti-Semitism. Take it down.”
The institute, which is dedicated to promoting and exchanging information and cultural values of the Arab world, was founded in 1980 by the French government and 18 Arab countries.
In 2013, the French government appointed Jack Lang, a Socialist politician and former cabinet minister whose Jewish father is a Holocaust survivor, as the institute’s head.
The Times of Israel Community.