It may be offensive, harmful, or antisemitic to exhibit drawings of Jews eating babies or standing on skulls, but is it illegal?
This question arose on Monday in relation to the controversial art exhibition Drawings Against Genocide by British artist and art critic Matthew Collings, which is showing at Joseph Wales Studios in Margate, Kent.
The drawings are graphic. One depicts the owner of Sotheby’s, French-Israeli businessman Patrick Drahi, eating babies alive. Multiple depict Jews as devils with horns or standing on skulls with messages like “we love death.” There are also several that deny that Hamas committed rape or sexual violence on October 7, 2023.
Israeli Chargée d’Affaires Daniela Grudsky wrote on social media that “It should be treated with the full seriousness of the law.”
But does anything in the exhibition contravene the law?
Kent Police told The Jerusalem Post that “no criminal offenses were identified” at the exhibition.
In the United Kingdom, freedom of expression and protection from hate speech are both protected by law, and these protections sometimes clash.
Collings’s exhibition sits right on the legal boundary between the two, but, as Kent Police said, it is not likely to constitute a criminal offense.
Under the Human Rights Act 1998, artistic expression, political speech, and political art are all protected under the right to freedom of expression. Courts have repeatedly ruled that this still applies even if the art or expression “offends, shocks, or disturbs.”
Art like Collings’s exhibition is therefore prima facie protected in the UK, even if it uses extreme or offensive imagery (such as eating babies or blood-dripping demons), targets governments or ideologies, or provokes outrage.
In fact, political art like this is afforded some of the strongest protections under the law.
Collings can claim that his work is political criticism of Israel, the US, capitalism, or war, – and he has done so in certain cases – and this will strengthen protection under the Human Rights Act 1998.
There are, however, some ways the law can be applied to art such as this. Under the Public Order Act 1986, classic antisemitic tropes (such as Jews as demons, baby-eating libels), the use of Jewish symbols (like Stars of David) in dehumanizing ways, or denial/minimization of atrocities can, on occasion, be argued to be “abusive or insulting material” targeting a protected group.
More specifically, Section 18, “Stirring up racial hatred” states that “A person who uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behavior, or displays any written material which is threatening, abusive or insulting, is guilty of an offence if (a) he intends thereby to stir up racial hatred, or (b) having regard to all the circumstances racial hatred is likely to be stirred up thereby.”
Section 17 defines “racial hatred” as hatred against a group of persons defined by reference to color, race, nationality (including citizenship), or ethnic or national origins. This can and has been interpreted by courts to include Jews as an ethnic group, so antisemitism would fall within this provision.
However, while many may agree that Collings’s drawings are abusive or insulting, they can only be deemed illegal if it can be proved that he intended to stir up racial hatred. This is a very high bar, and hard for prosecutors to prove.
Collings merely needs to say “This is about Israel, not Jews,” and intent becomes ambiguous, making prosecution harder.
Kent Police told British Jewish journalist Zoe Strimpel that no action would be taken because it was “criticism of the Israeli state,” which suggests law enforcement currently sees it as falling on the protected side.
None of this is to negate the fact that the material contains offensive imagery, but offense does not equal illegality.
Perhaps more of the outrage is directed at the double-standard aspect. Strimpel told Collings that the art made her feel uncomfortable, adding that if she were a Black woman, people would take her offense more seriously. The suggestion being that one metric is applied to Jews and another to everyone else.
But beyond the strict legal question, the controversy about the exhibition raises broader concerns about how modern British society may be seen to be dismissing Jewish suffering, fears, and distress. Even where no criminal offense is found, legality and legitimacy are not the same.
Incidents such as this, where free expression is favored over Jewish feelings of safety, show a widening gap between what is legally permissible and what UK Jews experience as socially harmful or alienating.
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