‘’It’s a bit derisory and saddening,” reacted Jack Lang, president of the Institut du Monde Arabe and former minister, on a Jewish radio.

‘’It is a reaction that seeks to divert from the deep meaning of this exhibition, which has nothing to do with this or that political debate,’’ he added.

The anti-Israel BDS (Boycott, Disinvestment, Sanctions) under the guise of ‘’Arab intellectuals’’ has circulated and signed a petition against an exhibition ‘’Jews of the East’’ presented by the Institut du Monde Arabe (Arab World Institute) in Paris.

The event is accused of presenting at the institute works lent by Israeli institutions. and, therefore, to give “explicit signs of normalization” with a “regime of settlement colonialism and apartheid,” in the words of the petition.

‘’It’s a bit derisory and saddening,” reacted Jack Lang, president of the institute and former minister, on a Jewish radio.

‘’It is a reaction that seeks to divert from the deep meaning of this exhibition, which has nothing to do with this or that political debate,’’ he added.

The former French Minister of Culture under President François Mitterrand said that of the nearly 300 works from around the world in the exhibition ‘’Jews of the East,’’ only “three or four” would come “from Jerusalem.

An attack all the more damaging against this event at the Institut du Monde Arabe that Jack Lang considers to have “contributed to highlight the Palestinian culture as no one, as no institution”.

The petition was launched in December by the BDS movement. It clamis that the institute “would betray its intellectual mission by adopting this normalizing approach – one of the worst forms of coercive and immoral use of art as a political tool to legitimize colonialism and oppression.”

The initiative is in line with previous actions of the BDS movement, known for calling for a systematic boycott of Israel and the rejection of all cultural cooperation.

Some 250 Arab intellectuals and personalities have signed the petition, including  Lebanese writer Elias Khoury, Palestinian film director Elia Suleiman and Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi.

“I was saddened to see that people, some of them good people, writers, philosophers, let themselves be taken on board, like sheep, in a text whose veracity they have not even checked,” said Jack Lang.

He highlighted the attendance of the exhibit.’’It is a hit and meets an enthusiastic response, every day the attendance is considerable,’’ Lang said.

Conceived under the general curatorship of historian Benjamin Stora, ‘’Jews of the East: A Millennial History,’’ is the third part of exhibitions devoted by the IMA to the imprint of the three great monotheistic religions on the Arab world. Opened in November, the exhibition focuses on the life and evolution of Jewish communities in the Arab world, as well as on the numerous exchanges with the Muslim community.

Open until March 13, it presents a large number of photographs alongside manuscripts, paintings, archaeological remains and objects from daily life as well as liturgical.