Mysterious gold Netanyahu statue taken down

A golden stature of Prime Minsiter Benjamin Netnayhau is removed from Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square after it mysteriously appeared there overnight.

By 9 a.m. inspectors had stuck a notice on it warning that the city would remove it and charge the artist unless it was taken away within four hours.

Sculptor Itay Zalait, who had given advance notice to Israeli media that he was “going to perform an underground political-artistic act which will have major media reverberations,” said it was just the first in a series of artistic acts he was planning.

Culture Minister Miri Regev (Likud) provoked a lively debate on her Facebook page after posting, “How cut off from reality can an artist be? Israel is democratic, [with] individual rights, civil rights, moral sensitivity, an activist judiciary, free media, in short one of the free countries…But for artists disconnected disconnected from reality, the one golden calf is hatred of Netanyahu.”