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A Jewish museum exhibit features the Palestinian flag. Some visitors wonder if it belongs.
(J. The Jewish News of Northern California via JTA) — Tucked in the far corner of a large, brightly-lit exhibition hall on the ground floor of the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, there is a delicate-looking piece of art with a strong political message.
At first glance, it appears to be three circular vases with flowers in them. The ceramic vases sit on shelves attached to the wall, and colorful collages hang above them. On closer inspection, visitors will notice that the flowers are made out of paper and that affixed to each vase is an image of the Palestinian flag printed on foam board.
A nearby label written by the curators of the exhibit, titled “Tikkun: For the Cosmos, the Community, and Ourselves,” explains that the piece was inspired by a conversation the artist, Tosha Stimage of Berkeley, had with a Palestinian man. He told Stimage about the plants that are native to Palestine — “a place which he can no longer access due to the ongoing conflict in the region,” the curators write.
The label also includes a note about the flag: “Some may find its presence at The CJM troubling or confusing, while others may find it appropriate and forthright. Stimage recognizes the potential for these divergent responses and hopes to use them as a means of generating dialogue.”
On a Sunday afternoon in October, Maury Ostroff read the label and walked away without inspecting the artwork.
Visitors to the “Tikkun” exhibit are encouraged to share their responses to the artwork via comment cards. (Andrew Esensten)
Asked how the presence of the flag made him feel, Ostroff, who is Jewish and lives in Muir Beach, in Marin County, replied, “Unhappy.”
Why?
“It’s not offensive to me in the same way that a swastika is. My skin is a little bit thicker than that. But I wish it weren’t here.”
He added, “What’s so Jewish about this? What’s so ‘tikkun olam’ about all of this?”
For the “Tikkun” exhibit, which opened Feb. 17 and runs through Jan. 8, the CJM invited both Jewish and non-Jewish Bay Area artists to contribute new works on the theme of repair, however they chose to interpret it. “No one is listening to us,” the piece by Stimage, who is not Jewish, is the first work of art featuring the Palestinian flag to be shown at CJM in recent memory; the museum could not say when or if the flag has been displayed on its walls before.
The piece prompted several internal conversations among CJM staff when it was first submitted and, since it has been on display, has generated a variety of responses from museumgoers who have left comments in a box at the entrance to the exhibit. Intentionally or not, Stimage has raised numerous questions with the artwork, including: Does a work of art that is sympathetic to the Palestinian struggle for statehood belong in a Jewish museum? And what is the role of a contemporary Jewish museum, anyway?
“To truly be a contemporary art museum, meaning embedded in the contemporary issues of our day, our job is to provide a platform for dialogue and to share a diversity of perspectives on our walls,” said Chad Coerver, CJM’s executive director since September 2021. “If any institution [like ours] took the path of withholding artwork that troubled our staff, our board or our community, it would be very difficult to mount exhibitions.”
CJM is a member of the Council of American Jewish Museums, a network of 76 museums across the country. CAJM does not have guidelines about the kind of art its member museums can and cannot display, according to Executive Director Melissa Yaverbaum.
J. reached out to several CAJM member museums in New York, Los Angeles and other places by email to ask if they had ever shown artwork with Palestinian iconography or works by Palestinian artists. The museums declined to answer or did not respond.
In recent years, two Jewish museums have been embroiled in controversy over issues relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership in Chicago staged an exhibit in 2008 on Israeli and Palestinian concepts of homeland that included maps and portraits of Palestinians. Following outcry from members of the local Jewish community who felt the exhibit presented Israel in a negative light, the museum decided to close the exhibit after only a few weeks. And in 2019, the director of the Jewish Museum Berlin resigned after the museum tweeted a link to a pro-BDS article in a German newspaper. (The museum previously came under fire for welcoming anti-Zionist scholar Judith Butler and representatives of Iran.)
In a joint interview with J., two CJM staffers who worked on “Tikkun” — co-curator Qianjin Montoya, who is not Jewish, and a Jewish senior curator who served in an advisory role, Heidi Rabben — shared the story of how Stimage’s piece came to be in the exhibit. (Montoya’s co-curator for the exhibit, Arianne Gelardin, no longer works at the museum.)
Since 2009, CJM has invited local artists from different backgrounds to create new work as part of the museum’s annual Dorothy Saxe Invitational. The idea for “Tikkun” was hatched before the pandemic put the planning process on hold. Once the CJM and Saxe — a local philanthropist and art collector — agreed on the theme, the co-curators invited artists “already engaged in healing through their relationship to community or in their practice of daily life,” Gelardin told J. last February.
The 30 artists who accepted the museum’s invitation were given only four months to conceive of and submit new works. That was likely the shortest timeline in the history of the invitational, which has been held 11 previous times, according to the museum. Each artist received a packet of materials compiled by CJM staff, with input from the Shalom Hartman Institute, a non-degree granting Jewish education center, to guide their thinking on “tikkun.”
Stimage was invited to participate because she is “very active” in the Bay Area and because “her work reflects ideas of community and connection,” Montoya said.
The curators said Stimage’s inclusion of the Palestinian flag in her submitted piece came as a surprise and prompted challenging conversations. However, they noted that they found the content of some of the other artists’ work surprising, too, and that it’s not unusual for contemporary artists to push the envelope in their work.
“I wouldn’t say we expected to receive a piece about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but we weren’t steering anyone away from that, either,” Rabben told J., adding that the submission guidelines did not place any topic off limits. “That’s a commitment from the museum to authentically represent the creative spirit of the artists that we’re working with,” she said.
Still, the curators said they engaged in a dialogue with Stimage in order to better understand each aspect of her piece and her overall intentions. Through those conversations, the curators learned that Stimage wanted to explore a moment of “rupture,” and that through her piece she hoped to communicate “that before healing or repair might happen, you have to first acknowledge that rupture,” Rabben said.
The Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco is showing “Tikkun,” an exhibit of works by Jewish and non-Jewish artists on the theme of repair. (Andrew Esensten)
Coerver, who was involved in some of the conversations, stressed that “careful consideration” was given to including the piece in the exhibit. “We felt an artwork addressing the plight of the Palestinians was appropriate in an exhibition on healing and repair,” he said. (No work submitted as part of the Dorothy Saxe Invitational has ever been outright rejected, the museum said.)
Stimage did not respond to interview requests from J. According to a CV on her website, she was born in Jackson, Mississippi, and earned an MFA from California College of the Arts in 2016. She is a past fellow at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco and was an artist-in-residence at Facebook in 2018. She also owns a floral gift shop in Oakland called Saint Flora.
Her work often touches on Black identity; she created a piece honoring Sandra Bland, an African-American woman whose 2015 arrest and death in a Texas jail cell sparked protests, and contributed to a 2019 San Francisco Art Institute exhibit on the Black Panther Party.
“I have a responsibility to create things that will, to the best of my present knowledge, do more good than harm, heal, inspire and uplift other humans,” she told the San Francisco Bay View National Black Newspaper in 2015.
Stimage’s precise views on Israel are unknown. CJM referred J. to her artist statement for “No one is listening to us,” which reads: “Olive, sage, and sumac are flowering plants native to the Mediterranean (including regions of Gaza and the West Bank) that have a direct relationship to contested ancestral land and affect the livelihood of so many Palestinian farmers and families caught in the conflict. They are positioned in the space of The Contemporary Jewish Museum as a metaphor for the ongoing conflict over land rights and the desperate need for restoration and healing of an age-old wound.”
The curators told J. that during their conversations with Stimage about her piece, they asked her why including images of the Palestinian flag was important to her but did not request that she remove them.
“We determined that none of [the piece’s] components in and of themselves signified something problematic or concerning,” Rabben said. “Of course, we had the awareness that the symbol [of the flag] will be read in a variety of ways by a variety of people.”
(Rabben pointed out that the exhibit includes other works with national symbols rendered in provocative ways, such as a black-and-white photograph of an American flag that was torn apart and partially reassembled by Mexican-American artist Jose Arias.)
The Palestinian flag — which contains the Pan-Arab colors of black, white, green and red — was adopted by the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1964. Since then, it has been the primary symbol of Palestinian nationalism.
For decades, the PLO was considered an enemy organization by Israel, and anything associated with it “had no place in Israeli public life,” said Eran Kaplan, an Israeli-born professor of Israel studies at San Francisco State University. Israel never went so far as to ban the flag. However, during the First Intifada, which lasted from 1987 to 1993, Israeli soldiers sometimes followed orders to confiscate the flag from protesters in the West Bank and Gaza.
With the signing of the Oslo Accord in 1993, Israel and the PLO recognized each other as negotiating partners. Yet the Palestinian flag remains a contentious symbol in Israel today. Kaplan noted that it recently served as a flashpoint during the funeral procession of Shireen Abu Akleh, the Palestinian American broadcaster who was killed in the West Bank in May. (The IDF conducted a review and admitted that the Israeli soldier who shot her had most likely misidentified her as an armed militant.) After warning Abu Akleh’s family not to display the flag, Israeli police attacked mourners in East Jerusalem, ripping flags out of their hands and off of the vehicle carrying her casket.
Today, the flag holds different meanings for Israelis and American Jews from different generations and political persuasions.
“There are large segments in Israeli society who view any form of Palestinian national identity as a threat to the existence of Israel,” Kaplan said. “There are others who view the PLO as legitimate partners in any form of negotiations [over the creation of a Palestinian state], but there’s an absolute split over those questions.”
Given the sensitive nature of Stimage’s work and others in the exhibit, the curators decided to solicit feedback from visitors via comment cards available at the entrance to the hall. Rabben said the museum has received a number of comments specifically about “No one is listening to us,” most of which were positive. “The majority of those comments were ‘Thank you for offering space for this topic at the museum,’” she said.
Last month, a security guard sitting in the “Tikkun” exhibition hall told a reporter that he had not witnessed any expressions of outrage or protest through the first nine months of the exhibit. “When we opened we were afraid of negative reactions, but they’re not stressed about it,” he said of visitors. “We have shown worse things here.” The guard, who has worked at the museum since it opened in 2008, mentioned a 2010 exhibit, “Our Struggle: Responding to Mein Kampf,” which included a copy of Hitler’s autobiography. “Some people were cussing us out” for displaying the book, he recalled.
Meanwhile, on the same floor as “Tikkun,” there is another, smaller exhibit containing potentially offensive art. A sign outside of the room warns visitors that inside is a Hitler marionette created by the parents of puppeteer Frank Oz. “Our intention in displaying this object is to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive through the objects and firsthand stories of those who experienced its persecution, and to encourage conversation and education about the ongoing horrors of antisemitism and authoritarianism today,” the sign says.
Coerver, CJM’s executive director, said he was proud that the museum’s three current exhibits — “Tikkun,” “Oz is for Oznowicz: A Puppet Family’s History” and “Gillian Laub: Family Matters,” which includes photographs that Laub took of her Trump-supporting relatives — are raising “challenging questions” and providing opportunities for both visitors and museum staff to “expand our horizons.”
“We’ve been wading into some issues that I think are a little thicker than maybe we’ve been confronting in the past,” he said, “and I hope that continues.”
A version of this piece originally ran in J. The Jewish News of Northern California, and is reprinted with permission.
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Recorded anti-Jewish hate crimes rise 10% in England and Wales
(JTA) — Hate crimes targeting Jewish people in England and Wales rose by 10% in the year ended in March, according to the latest data released by the British government.
Police-reported hate crime — including crime influenced by other factors such as race and sexual orientation — overall increased by 7% compared with the previous year, according to the Home Office data released last week.
British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband posted on X on Monday, “Antisemitism has no place in our society. This morning, I hosted a crucial discussion with the J7 Global Task Force to discuss how we can work together across countries to stamp out the scourge of antisemitism.”
Following the meeting, the Board of Deputies of British Jews issued a statement explaining that Miliband and the task force had discussed, among other things, “the sharp rise in global antisemitism” and the “continued demonisation of Israel.” Representatives from the U.K., the U.S., Canada, Germany, France, Argentina and Australia make up the task force.
“In the meeting, the J7 proposed a new international intergovernmental ministerial task force on antisemitism, comprising the countries represented in the J7 and taking on the key themes discussed. We were pleased that the Foreign Secretary agreed to host an inaugural meeting of J7 countries’ ministers to start this process,” the statement sent to JTA said.
The Community Security Trust, a charity that protects the Jewish community and monitors antisemitism, said on X that the new data show “that antisemitic hate crime remains at an unacceptably high level.”
“As seen previously, Jewish people continue to experience by far the highest police-recorded rate per head of religious hate crime of any faith group,” CST said. “This shows the disproportionate scale of anti-Jewish hatred and its impact on Jewish life in Britain.”
Religious hate crime rose by 13% overall in the 12 months to March 2026, the report said. The overall figure rose from 10,067 to 11,419 offenses.
The two groups most affected were Jews and Muslims, the Home Office said. Religiously motivated hate crimes against Muslims increased 15%, the report found, with spikes reported around public protests in September 2025 and the start of the U.S. war with Iran in February.
The number of recorded offenses affecting Jews rose from 2,874 to 3,162 offenses, spiking after the attack on Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester last year on Yom Kippur.
Two men, Melvin Cravitz and Adrian Daulby, were killed on Oct. 2, 2025, after Jihad Al-Shamie, who was wearing a fake suicide bomb belt, drove into the gates of Heaton Park synagogue and began attacking congregants with a knife. Cravitz died from stab wounds; Daulby was fatally struck by a police bullet during the response.
A spate of violent antisemitic incidents followed this year, including the torching of four ambulances belonging to Jewish volunteer service Hatzola on March 23 and the stabbing of two Jewish men in separate attacks in Golders Green on April 29.
The Home Office figures, which do not include data from London’s Metropolitan Police Service because of a change in how it records crime, showed the second-highest level of religious hate crime directed at the Jewish community since the Home Office began keeping records in 2018. It was surpassed only by the year ending March 2024.
“In the last year, there were 117 police recorded religious hate crimes targeted at Jewish people per 10,000 population, the highest rate for any religious group. The next highest rate was for religious hate crimes targeted at Muslims, with 13 per 10,000 population,” said the Home Office.
The report was published on Oct. 8, at a time of heightened sensitivity. Eleven people were arrested at pro-Palestinian marches in London a day earlier, despite calls by the Metropolitan Police to avoid demonstrating on the anniversary of Hamas’ deadly 2023 raids inside Israel.
Police reported 20 arrests at Saturday’s pro-Palestinian protest in London, where many demonstrators were wearing kaffiyehs, waving Palestinian flags and brandishing banners.
The level of hate directed at the Jewish community has remained at an “elevated level” since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas conflict, the report stated.
The CST said, “There is an urgent need to reduce the amount of incitement connected to conflict overseas,” adding that “much more needs to be done across society to tackle this problem.”
Over the summer the government announced a major funding boost to support the Jewish community, promising £250 million ($335 million) over the next three years for increased policing and protection of Jewish communities.
More remains to be done, according to community organizations.
A spokesperson for the Board of Deputies of British Jews said the report’s publication “confirms the need for rigorous prosecution to ensure deterrence, and a whole of society approach to tackling hatred and extremism, and to stopping conflict in the Middle East being used to incite hatred against the Jewish community.”
The Campaign Against Antisemitism said the report was evidence that the British justice system was failing the Jewish community.
“Antisemites, emboldened by the Hamas terrorist atrocity three years ago, are not only not letting up in their hatred but are doubling down,” it said in a statement. “That’s because there is no real deterrent. So really these figures are most damning for the criminal justice system, which has utterly failed to defend British Jews.
“Even as conflict in the Middle East is easing off, antisemitism in the U.K. is rising, yet there have been essentially no changes in policing policy over the past three years and nobody has been held to account for this monumental failure,” the campaign said.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Recorded anti-Jewish hate crimes rise 10% in England and Wales appeared first on The Forward.
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Hasan Piker criticizes ‘opportunists’ who accused Mamdani of genocide
(JTA) — Hasan Piker called the protesters who jeered New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani at an Oct. 7 vigil last week “opportunists,” who “tarnished” the anti-Zionist movement’s message.
Piker, the popular streamer who has campaigned for a number of democratic socialist candidates, made his remarks Sunday at Jewish Currents Live, an all-day event hosted by the left-wing magazine at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
Speaking on a panel titled “Can the Left Wield Power?”, he said that the protesters had “valid concerns,” including demands like firing police commissioner Jessica Tisch and disbanding the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group, a heavily armed unit that often responds to protests.
But he criticized the Democratic Socialists of America — the left-wing political organization that Mamdani has called his “political home” — for not playing a bigger role in last week’s protest, which started at City Hall and later overran an Israeli peace vigil. DSA did not sponsor the protest, though some campus chapters of its student section, the Young DSA, participated.
“The DSA not being at the forefront of the anti-Zionist mobilization in New York City is what allowed that mobilization to be tarnished by opportunists, sectarians and those who actually were calling him a genocidaire — which I obviously find to be ridiculous,” Piker said, referring to protesters’ chants of “Mayor Mamdani you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide.”
Piker, who has drawn heat for his anti-Israel views, did not comment on the Hamas iconography displayed by numerous protesters, nor the decision to crash an Oct. 7 vigil that memorialized the 1,200 people killed in the Hamas-led attacks on that date in 2023, and the 74,000 Palestinians who have been killed since then, according to Gaza health ministry figures, which do not distinguish civilians from combatants.
Separately, Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University pro-Palestinian protest leader who was detained by ICE last year, reportedly criticized those protesters’ “purity politics” during an event in Washington, D.C.
“You don’t have to agree with someone 100 percent — 85 percent is good,” he said, provided that the end goal is “liberating Palestine and ending the unconditional support of the United States.”
Where should Democrats draw the line?
Two Democratic congressional nominees from New York, Brad Lander and Darializa Avila Chevalier, appeared on a separate panel focused on Israel and the Democratic Party.
Lander is Jewish and Darializa Avila Chevalier helped lead Columbia University’s pro-Palestinian encampment in 2024. Peter Beinart, editor-at-large at Jewish Currents, moderated the panel, which also featured Georgia state Rep. Ruwa Romman, the first Palestinian American elected to public office in her state.
Their discussion exposed some of the gaps between Lander and Avila Chevalier, both progressives who were endorsed by Mamdani this year and who appeared in a campaign ad together alongside fellow Mamdani endorsee Claire Valdez.
Beinart asked where Democrats should draw the line on what is considered legitimate Palestinian resistance. He pointed to the pro-Palestinian protest held in New York City on Oct. 8, 2023, which Avila Chevalier attended and Lander called “abominable” at the time.
“I think international law has already drawn that line,” Avila Chevalier said, arguing that U.S. protests should target Israel, which receives U.S. support, rather than Hamas.
“We could be the biggest anti-Hamas protesters, but a protest against Hamas in the U.S. isn’t going to do anything,” Avila Chevalier said. “Because we don’t fund it. We don’t have any structural power over it, there is nothing tying us to that institution other than condemning it endlessly.”
After the event, Lander did not confirm to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency whether he had spoken about that Oct. 8 protest with Avila Chevalier.
“We have talked about these issues broadly in private, and I don’t want to characterize those conversations,” Lander told JTA. “And obviously I’ve made my feelings known in public, and I stand by them. I mean, on that day, I was in mourning.”
An attendee named Mark, 29, who declined to share his last name to avoid potential workplace complications, said he felt that Avila Chevalier “didn’t really acknowledge the criticism about perhaps disregarding loss of life; despite the power imbalance, it is lost life.”
For Lander, meanwhile, Mark said it was “politically expedient” for him to not directly address Avila Chevalier’s presence at the 2023 protest. “This is a super lefty crowd that probably would eat him alive if he went against her right now,” he said.
During the panel, Avila Chevalier repeated her call for an arms embargo against Israel while Lander stopped short of doing so, consistent with his statements in the past that Israel should be able to buy defensive ware. Both said Congress must pass the Block the Bombs Act and vote to suspend the sale of offensive U.S. military weapons to Israel. Lander was the only speaker on stage who advocated for a two-state solution in the region.
Beinart asked Romman about Jon Ossoff, the Jewish Democratic senator running for reelection in her state, and how she views his stance on Palestine. She said she was pleased that both Georgia senators have been consistently voting in favor of Bernie Sanders’ resolution to block arms sales to Israel, but added that “in terms of leading, in terms of rhetoric, there’s still a lot of work to be done.”
“We’ll get everyone to where we need them to be eventually,” she said.
‘The bund is back in town’
The Jewish Labor Bund — the early 20th-century socialist movement that fought against Bolshevism, Nazism and Zionism — came up at numerous points on Sunday. One attendee doled out fliers with a website URL and the message, “Tell your bubbe the bund is back in town.” It was also a subject of a conversation that featured Molly Crabapple, whose 2026 book “Here Where We Live is Our Country” focuses on the Bund.
Arlene Geiger, an Upper West Sider and longtime activist, told JTA that she related to those conversations.
“My connection to Judaism is not to Israel, it never has been. It’s more to Eastern Europe and the Bund, so that spoke to me,” Geiger said.
Mark, who is from New Jersey, said he doesn’t come from a “staunchly pro-Zionist” family, but that he has a new interest in leftist Jewish spaces since realizing that he could no longer comfortably distance himself from the issue of Israel, which he believes is committing a genocide.
“It’s just an education for me to be immersed in this kind of space,” he said.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Hasan Piker criticizes ‘opportunists’ who accused Mamdani of genocide appeared first on The Forward.
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In Israel, boy killed, hikers injured, after suspected Hezbollah cluster bomb detonates
(JTA) — An explosion during a school hiking trip killed a boy about 14 years old on Monday and injured 24 others in northern Israel, Magen David Adom, Israel’s emergency medical service, said.
Rescue teams were dispatched to the scene, and the injured were evacuated to hospitals in northern Israel.
“An initial investigation by IDF forces at the site indicates that it was likely a cluster bomb belonging to the Hezbollah terror organization that had been left in the area and exploded,” the military said in a statement.
“The injured were scattered along the route, some trying to help their wounded friends,” explained David Radko, an MDA medic who said he was the first to arrive on the scene. “Despite the horrific scenes and distress, the injured cooperated with me exceptionally well. Everyone tried to help their friends as much as they could. Some even applied tourniquets to their friends to stop the bleeding.”
Police Commissioner Danny Levy visited the scene and said authorities may ban similar school trips in the near future. “We need to examine whether we are putting students at risk by allowing them to go on these trips,” he said.
Tamir Douadi, a resident of Kibbutz Manara, described the scene in a voice cracking with emotion to Channel 12: “Look, they’re young people, children. You see them sitting there like that, holding their friends.”
The object exploded “in the hands” of one of the schoolchildren, Comm. Meir Eliyahu, commander of the Israel Police’s Northern District told reporters at the scene.
Orly Ben Simon, an MDA paramedic, said personnel identified several people with injuries of varying severity, including a 14-year-old boy who was unconscious and in critical condition. “We immediately began prolonged and intensive resuscitation efforts. Unfortunately, his injuries were critical, and we had to pronounce him dead at the scene,” she said in a statement provided by the MDA.
She added that medical teams treated two teenagers who were seriously injured, as well as other injured people who were able to walk.
In an initial statement, the Ma’alot-Tarshiha municipality said the explosion occurred during an annual hiking trip by students from the ORT Ma’alot religious high school, located in the mixed Jewish-Arab town, about five miles from the Lebanese border. The entire area has come under heavy fire from Hezbollah since Oct. 7, 2023, and some of the munitions have failed to detonate.
MDA said the injured included 22 teenagers and two adults in their 50s. Two of the injured were in serious condition and 10 were in moderate condition. They were evacuated by ambulance and helicopter to hospitals in Haifa, Safed and Nahariya.
Israel’s Education Ministry described the incident as “extremely serious.” According to the ministry, the trip was properly approved in accordance with established procedures. Ma’alot-Tarshiha Mayor Moti Ben David told Israeli media that the route was a popular hiking trail.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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