Israeli diplomat slams UK anti-Israel art exhibit featuring swastika as antisemitic
Charge d’affaires says ‘Drawings against Genocide’ display is ‘indefensible;’ Jewish writer who confronted artist over Nazi symbolism, antisemitic tropes, jeered by other attendees
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Israel’s charge d’affaires in the UK condemned an art exhibit that associates Israel with Nazi imagery, calling it antisemitic and indefensible.
The exhibit by artist Matthew Collings, called “Drawings against Genocide” and showing in the town of Margate in southeast England, features drawings that harshly criticize Israel over the Gaza war in graphic terms. One work features text reading “Stop apartheid demon,” and others show Israeli soldiers stepping over skulls in scenes doused with blood.
One work displays a drawing of US President Donald Trump with a swastika and an Israeli flag, along with the words “Death,” “Israel” and “Epstein,” a reference to Jeffrey Epstein, the financier and convicted sex offender. The caption of that drawing reads, “Trump thinks: ‘Hmm, Epstein… Better invade Iran & murder Muslims,'” a likely reference to the claim that Trump launched the ongoing Iran war to distract from his associations with Epstein.
The exhibit drew attention on social media after Zoe Strimpel, a British Jewish writer, posted on X that she visited the exhibit on Saturday and confronted Collings, leading to jeers from onlookers.
Strimpel said that when she protested to the artist about the imagery, he was “instantly aggressive” and accused her of “defending a genocide.”
Regarding the Nazi symbolism, she said Collings told her, “Israel are the Nazis.”
Some of the visitors to the exhibit wore “globalize the intifada” t-shirts, Strimpel noted, a slogan which some see as a call for violence against Israelis and Jews.
In Margate. My cheeks are red. I am shaking. I popped into an exhibition that turned out to be the insane fever dream of an artist called Matthew Collins: ‘Drawings Against Genocide.’ The exhibition is described as ‘drawings… raising consciousness about hell…. Israel is the… pic.twitter.com/CO8Ee8eYLG
— Zoe Strimpel (@realzoestrimpel) March 21, 2026
Strimpel’s post drew responses of outrage from many, among them Conservative lawmaker and former senior cabinet minister Michael Gove, who wrote “Truly terrible,” and Jewish Actress Tracy-Ann Oberman, who said it was “Disgusting.”
In response to the exhibit, Israeli charge d’affaires Daniela Grudsky posted late Saturday, “This isn’t art. It isn’t free speech. It’s antisemitism — crude, aggressive, and completely indefensible. It should be treated with the full seriousness of the law.”
The Combat Antisemitism watchdog posted to X on Sunday that Collings “displayed monstrous blood libel, portraying Jews as demons eating children and as a blood-thirsty ‘Jewish lobby.'”
“The images speak for themselves, worse than Nazi propaganda,” the group wrote.
Strimple, who said she was left “shaking,” reported the exhibit to the police. In a Sunday update, she wrote that a police sergeant had called to tell her that no action would be taken.
According to Strimpel, the policeman said that the pictures and “criticism of the Israeli state” and that “because some Israelis happen to be Jews it doesn’t mean it’s antisemitic.”
Yesterday in Margate, UK, an exhibition titled “Drawings Against Genocide” by Matthew Collings displayed monstrous blood libel, portraying Jews as demons eating children and as a blood-thirsty “Jewish lobby.”
The images speak for themselves, worse than Nazi propaganda. pic.twitter.com/3yUHicysMl
— Combat Antisemitism Movement (@CombatASemitism) March 22, 2026
Strimpel said she would file a complaint about the police response.
Update on David Collings exhibit at Margate’s Joseph Wales gallery.
Kent police sergeant just called.
He told me: no action to be taken.
The pictures (a few below) are in his view ‘criticism of the Israeli state’.
He said ‘because some Israelis happen to be Jews it doesn’t mean… pic.twitter.com/3Svd2qGAtH— Zoe Strimpel (@realzoestrimpel) March 22, 2026
Attacks against Jews and Jewish targets have risen worldwide since the October 2023 Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel and massacres that triggered the Gaza war. There has been another rise in incidents following the start of the Israeli-US war with Iran.
The Hamas attack killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians. Terrorists also abducted 361 people who were taken as hostages to the Gaza Strip.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 72,000 people in the Strip have been killed during the war — including over 600 since an October 2025 ceasefire — though the toll does not differentiate between civilians and combatants.
The Israeli military believes that Hamas’s overall toll is largely accurate, with IDF officials estimating that two to three civilians were killed for every dead terror operative.
Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.
Since the Gaza conflict started, Britain has recorded significantly higher levels of antisemitic hate than in previous years. The Community Security Trust, which advises Britain’s estimated 290,000 Jews on security matters, recorded 3,700 in 2025, up from 1,662 in 2022.
The Times of Israel Community.