Thread:

Most of my friends and many members of my family belong to the political left – I consider myself to be centre-left but am currently politically homeless.

Over the years, and with the advent of social media, I came to dread what I might see on Facebook, posted by people I had previously trusted – largely along the lines of accusations of murderous brutality beyond any committed by any other country; calls to boycott it and so on.

How could I support such a despicable country, I was asked. An invisible finger was pointed at me, the Zionist Jew: I should know better. I could sense what I felt to be underlying antisemitism, but at that time, I didn’t know that a guideline existed to define it.

I lost a lot of friends over that time; I felt extremely alone. One night, a close friend posted something in support of ‘Israel apartheid week’. It unleashed something.

I cried all night, unable to stop – the trauma of my grandparents’ murder in the Holocaust pouring out from a place I didn’t know was in me.

When Jeremy Corbyn became leader of Labour, I looked on helplessly as people I knew, friends and family, cheered him on. I knew then what some of those people have realised now – but back then no-one was listening.

Making Witness came out of a need to express what I was feeling, but also to fight back. I knew it had to be a giant piece of art, as big as I could physically manage. It had to be big in order to have a chance of being ‘seen’. https://minakupfermann.com/witness 

I had never made anything of that size before; I was going on a lot of faith, working on it when I could. While doing the research, I found out that other people were actively fighting what was happening. What friends I had lost, I regained in new ones. It softened the pain.

The collaged pieces within Witness were all sourced online, mainly on social media. They cover different strands and types of antisemitism, including historical and religious antisemitism before WW2, Jews as ‘privileged whites’ and far-right all-out Jew-hating antisemitism.

The reason why antizionist ideas feature so strongly is that they have become ubiquitous now, to the point where they have become normalised and understood as truth. It is very much harder to identify and admit that these are actually antisemitic than any of the other forms.

I want to show how all manifestations of antisemitism are basically coming from the same source and must be recognised as such.

. @TheIHRA definition of #antisemitism is crucially important, in that it is the current benchmark for defining what is or isn't antisemitic. The battle for it to be adopted in Labour is still being fought in some constituencies.

It has also not (to my knowledge) been adopted by any of the unions, whose influence on our institutions – political and academic especially – is vast.

The clippings within Witness illustrate the different ways antisemitism may be expressed according to the IHRA definition and show what was and is still happening in the UK. If the painting is seen in years to come it will be a reminder of what we were going through at this time.

I realise I am trying to do something extremely difficult. Bombarded with huge amounts of disinformation about Israel (often coming from ‘respectable’ media outlets), many people are confused about the issues.

It takes work and goodwill to unpick the truth from all the distorted information. What I hope is at least to give people pause, to reconsider the ways they have been told to think and to understand the construction of the ideas they have been fed.

There is a problem in our society, and we need to face it. Antisemitism – whether it comes from the left or the right of society, whether from church or mosque (or indeed from within some fringe Jewish factions), human rights movement or academic institution; ...

... whether from advantaged or less advantaged societies – antisemitism must be recognised and fought. The engines that sustain it must be disassembled and reexamined.

At its core, antisemitism is a get-out clause that endorses shoddy thinking and behaviour, allowing people to evade personal responsibility. Antisemitic movements and ideologies reinforce hateful ideas of ‘other’ and are channels for the dark forces held within every human soul.