An art museum in Madrid is facing legal action for allegedly removing three elderly Israeli women, including a Holocaust survivor, because they were wearing Israeli or Jewish symbols.
The Action and Communication on the Middle East (ACOM) group, a prominent pro-Israeli organisation based in Spain, on Monday announced it will initiate legal action against the Queen Sofía National Museum Art Centre “for discrimination and possible promotion of hatred from a public institution”.
The incident on Sunday was part of “a repeated pattern of political instrumentalisation, indirect discrimination, and possible promotion of narratives of hatred toward the state of Israel and the Jewish-Israeli community from a public institution funded by all Spanish taxpayers”, according to ACOM.
Staff at the museum allegedly told the women to leave because they were “wearing a Star of David and an Israeli flag”, Dana Erlich, the head of mission at Israel’s embassy in Madrid, wrote on X.
The museum, which is under the authority of the Spanish Ministry of Culture, is a major cultural institution and a tourist attraction for the many paintings by Pablo Picasso it showcases.
According to the European Jewish Congress (EJC), staff at the museum told the women to leave “after they were insulted as ‘child killers’ and targeted for displaying Jewish symbols”.
The group said this was “deeply troubling and unacceptable”. Staff told the women that other visitors were “disturbed” by their presence, the EJC said. “Instead of protecting those subjected to antisemitic abuse, the apparent decision to remove the victims raises serious concerns about discrimination within a public cultural institution,” the EJC added.
The museum said in a statement that it had “requested its security department to immediately open an independent and transparent internal investigation to clarify what happened”.
It added that it wished to “unequivocally express its commitment to equality, religious freedom, and zero tolerance for any type of violence or discrimination related to antisemitism”.
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