At the Venice Biennale, No Israeli Can Win a Prize
The Venice Biennale is one of the most prestigious international exhibitions of art, and winning a prize at the Biennale gives an artist an enormous boost to his career. This year, however, the judges at the Biennale have announced that they will not be considering any Israelis for a prize, no matter what the quality of those artists’ submissions might be. More on the latest display of anti-Israel animus can be found here:
Israel Condemns Venice Biennale Jury Decision to Ban Israeli Artist From Winning Top Awards
by Shiryn Ghermezian, Algemeiner, April 28, 2026:
Israel’s Foreign Ministry has denounced the International Jury of the 61st Venice Biennale after its five members announced last week that they will not consider awarding top prizes to an artist from Israel.
In a released statement, the Venice Biennale’s jurors said they will exclude from consideration for the Golden and Silver Lion awards artists from “those countries whose leaders are currently charged with crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court (ICC),” which applies to both Israel and Russia in relation to the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, respectively.
Belu-Simion Fainaru is the artist representing Israel at the Venice Biennale this year with his installation “Rose of Nothingness.” Fainaru’s artwork will address topics such as Jewish mysticism, memory, and poetry. The artist – who was born in Bucharest, Romania, and now resides in the northern Israeli port city of Haifa — won the Israel Prize in Design and Interdisciplinary Art last year. A University of Haifa alumnus, he represented Romania at the 2019 Venice Biennale.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry said in a post on X that the jury’s decision to “boycott” Fainaru is “a contamination of the art world.”
“The political jury has transformed the Biennale from an open artistic space of free, boundless ideas into a spectacle of false, anti-Israeli political indoctrination,” the ministry added.
Fainaru believes that the jury’s decision has “created a hostile and degrading environment” and that he is being discriminated against based on his national origin, he said in an email last week cited by Artnet….
Of course he is being discriminated against. No two ways about it: he’s Israeli, no Israeli will be awarded a prize, as a fitting way to punish the colonial-settler, apartheid, genocidal Jewish state. Also sprach the five-man jury.
This year’s Venice Biennale will be open to the public from May 9-Nov. 22, and the awards ceremony will take place in Venice on May 9. The Golden Lion awards are given to the best artist in the main exhibition and to the best national pavilion, and the Silver Lion is awarded to a promising young artist. The winners will be selected among 110 participants….
This requires emendation. To wit: The Golden Lion awards are given to the best artist in the main exhibition unless that artist is an Israeli, and to the best national pavilion unless that pavilion belongs to Israel, and the Silver Lion is awarded to a promising young artist unless that promising young artist is an Israeli.
Zoe Butt, Elvira Dyangani Ose, Marta Kuzma, Giovanna Zapperi, and Solange Farkas are the jurors for the Venice Biennale this year. Explaining their decision to exclude Israel and Russia from the event’s top prizes, the jury said they feel “a responsibility towards the historical role of the Biennale as a platform that connects art to the urgencies of its time.”…
Among the “urgencies of its time” that this Biennale will not address, but indeed add to, is the worldwide epidemic of antisemitism, that is intimately tied to the spread of the very anti-Israel animus that the judges at this Biennale display in such vivid fashion, by insisting that no Israeli artist will be considered for a prize.
Following the statement from the jury, the European Union’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas announced that the bloc will withdraw $2.3 million in funding from the international art event for allowing Russia to participate. “While Russia bombs museums, destroys churches, and seeks to erase Ukrainian culture, it should not be allowed to exhibit its own,” Kallas said, as reported by Politico. “Russia’s return to the Venice Biennale is morally wrong, and the EU intends to cut its funding.”
Note that the judges are perfectly content to have Russian artists, but not Israelis, be eligible for prizes at this year’s Biennale. Is Israel, which has been fighting a six-front war for its very survival against terrorists of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and a terrorist state, a worse offender than Russia, that launched a war of aggression against an entirely innocent Ukraine, in order to seize territory that Putin wants to make part of Russia? It seems that the judges think so.
Hugh, I have to disagree with your assessment on the Russian - NATO proxy war in Ukraine. It's as cynical and biased as the people about whom you are complaining. GWM.
Here’s what I think should happen: American artists, gallerists, and art patrons, in protest at the Biennale’s decision, both stupid and cruel, to not consider Israeli artists for prizes, should simply refuse to take part in this year’s Biennale, including withdrawing any amounts the Americans had pledged to support the Biennale’s production. That will diminish the Biennale’s prestige, harm its finances, and limit the significance of its prizes.
North Macedonia: Islamic State jihadis carry out arson jihad attack on Skopje synagogue
“IS has a profoundly hostile opposition toward Jews and while the group has rarely directly confronted Jewish communities in the Middle East, its ideology frames Judaism as the primary enemy of Islam.”
The Islamic State didn’t originate this idea. It comes straight from the Qur’an: “You will find the Jews and the idolaters the most vehement of mankind in hostility to those who believe.” (5:82)
Arson attack at Skopje synagogue linked to so-called Islamic State, officials say
by Gavin Blackburn, Euro News, May 1, 2026 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):
An arson attack last month on a synagogue in North Macedonia’s capital has been linked to the so-called Islamic State (IS) group, the country’s intelligence service said on Friday.
Nobody was injured in the 12 April attack, which is the Orthodox Easter, but an entrance of the building in Skopje was left scorched after it was set on fire.
The Agency for National Security said they had raided several properties and arrested seven people believed to be a “part of a radical group ideologically linked to the global network of the Islamic State.”
Police said following the arrests on Thursday, they had charged a 21-year-old and a 38-year-old with terrorism related offences….
IS has a profoundly hostile opposition toward Jews and while the group has rarely directly confronted Jewish communities in the Middle East, its ideology frames Judaism as the primary enemy of Islam.
The group has frequently called for attacks on Jews and Jewish sites worldwide.
Britain's antisemitism tsunami
Earlier today, I appeared on Sky News Australia’s Outsiders to discuss last Wednesday’s stabbing attacks on Jews in London’s Golders Green. We discussed the inadequacy of the British government’s reaction to the tsunami of such attacks, the part played in this by Islamists and other Muslim antisemites, and the appalling fact that murderous hatred of Israel, Zionism and Jews has been reframed as conscience through the systematic lies told by the media and the global human rights establishment about the world’s only Jewish state.
You can watch this segment by clicking the arrow below.
Later this morning, I also appeared on Sky’s Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips which was largely devoted to discussing this issue with two other guests, political consultant Polly Mackenzie and the transport union leader Mick Lynch. Trevor’s interview with the Greens’ leader, Zack Polanksi, was a masterclass in holding this despicable and dangerous individual to account. We discussed the causes of the current tsunami of antisemitism in Britain, the reaction by the government and Polanski to the Golders Green attacks, and the likely fate of Sir Keir Starmer.
I made the point that the murderous Jew-hatred now rampant has been incited by wall-to-wall lies presenting the Israelis as evil and demonic. As if to prove my point, that lie was promptly trotted out.
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