The Madrid institution has announced that it will change the name of the series of activities organized in support of the Palestinians entitled “From the river to the sea”. The Israeli embassy and the Jewish community saw this designation as a call to “the elimination of Israel”.
The Reina Sofia museum in Madrid announced on Thursday 16 May that it will change the name of a series of activities organized in support of the Palestinians and strongly criticized by the Israeli embassy and the Jewish community who believe that this requires “the elimination of Israel”. This cycle of activities, including conferences and meetings with Palestinian artists, was called “From the river to the sea”.
This slogan, chanted at demonstrations in support of the Palestinians, refers to the borders of British-mandated Palestine that stretched from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea before the creation of Israel in 1948. It is interpreted by its detractors as a call for the elimination of Israel .
The Reina Sofia Museum announced it in a press release “give a new name” to this cycle – “Critical thinking meetings. International solidarity with Palestine” -, the initial name having been considered as “offensive to some communities”. The Israeli embassy and the Jewish community in Spain last week denounced the name of this cycle of activities which, according to them, “the annihilation of Israel”.
The Reina Sofia Museum is one of the most visited in Spain and has in its collection the famous painting of Guernica by Pablo Picasso. Spain is one of the EU countries most critical of the Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip, carried out in retaliation for the unprecedented attack by Hamas on 7 October.
The position of the government of socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and its calls for recognition of a Palestinian state have caused tensions with Israel, which temporarily recalled its ambassador to Spain in November.