London area mayor seeks removal of ‘anti-Semitic’ mural

A London mural depicting Jewish bankers is set to be removed following complaints that it has anti-Semitic undertones.

The London Jewish Chronicle reported that the council of the London borough of Tower Hamlets had said it was talking with police to have the image removed.

The mural, titled Freedom for Humanity, depicts a group of businessmen and bankers counting money around a Monopoly-style board balanced on the backs of men with dark complexions. It was reportedly spray-painted on private property. The Los Angeles-based artist, Kalen Ockerman, acknowledged that some of the bankers were Jewish but said the mural was not anti-Semitic.

“My mural is about class and privilege,” he wrote on his Facebook page. “The banker group is made up of Jewish and white Anglos. For some reason they are saying I am anti-Semitic. This I am most definitely not… What I am against is class.”

Lutfur Rahman, the Tower Hamlets mayor, said he “shares concerns” that the mural is anti-Semitic, and that it “perpetuated anti-Semitic propaganda about conspiratorial Jewish domination of financial and political institutions,” the Chronicle reported.