There is nothing more dreary than contemporary art that sets out merely to be provocative when it is in fact conventional and reactionary. A case in point is the Danish artistic group Surrend's anti-Israel poster showing maps of the Middle East in which the state of Israel does not exist, with the term "Final Solution" at the top. Not only does this mirror the jingoistic foreign policy of the Holocaust-denying regime in Iran, but it also resonates with many Germans.
The poster, created by the Danish Jew, Jan Egesborg, and his fellow Dane, Pia Bertelsen, has in recent weeks been plastered around selected Berlin neighbourhoods.
What Egesborg and Bertelsen understood to be a form of heroic, artistic resistance to a perceived ban on any criticism of Israel in Germany, was actually just one more manifestation of a widespread hostility towards the Jewish state. This can be seen, for example, in the seizing and banning of the display of Israeli flags by the authorities in such German cities as Kessel, Duisburg, Düsseldorf, Bochum, Mainz --- and Berlin. And in September, a student in Bochum was fined 300 euros for waving an Israeli flag as a counterprotest at an anti-Israel rally where demonstrators declaimed inflammatory, hate-driven rhetoric against the Jewish state.
Initially, Egesborg called for religious cleansing in Israel. "There is no other answer but for the Jews of Israel to find a new homeland, perhaps in the USA, Germany or Denmark", he said. Faced with criticism of his poster for its potential to incite wild enthusiasm among neo-Nazis, pro-Iranian regime supporters, and German leftists, Egesborg retreated from purging rhetoric, contenting himself with describing Israel as a historical mistake.
