A banner advertising an art show in London about Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacres was taken down at the request of police but installed anew on Monday, an organizer of the show said.
Linda Sason, a spokesperson for the organizers of the Nova Exhibition this month, said the banner was back on display following consultation with the Metropolitan Police, which had requested the banner be taken down, citing security concerns. “Following our request, police allowed the banner to be hung up again,” she told JNS on Monday.
A police spokesperson told JNS the force was formulating a statement on the issue, which provoked anger and dismay online, and allegations that police had tried to appease anti-Israel activists intent on intimidating Jews.
Sason added that “at this stage, the location of the exhibition is being kept secret, and has not yet been officially communicated to the broad public” in the media.
What began as a celebration of music, freedom, and life at the Nova Music Festival - became the site of one of the darkest massacres in modern history.
— Embassy of Israel to the USA (@IsraelinUSA) May 18, 2026
Young people who came to dance under the open sky were hunted, raped, murdered, and kidnapped in unimaginable brutality.
Now,… pic.twitter.com/dyRlKtJZ1b
The Nova Exhibition, organized by survivors of the Nova Party near Kibbutz Re’im, where Hamas terrorists murdered more than 300 people on Oct. 7, 2023, is a traveling show featuring fragments of what happened at the party grounds through survivor testimony, personal belongings recovered from there, and immersive exhibits, the Israeli Foreign Ministry has said.
Alex Gandler, spokesperson for the Israeli embassy in London, alluded to security concerns around the exhibition, which is scheduled to open on Wednesday, coinciding with the events of the United Kingdom’s Jewish Culture Month.
“The terror felt then must never be allowed to reach London. We trust that every necessary measure will be taken to prevent any hate, intimidation or threat directed at a cultural exhibition honoring victims of terror,” Gandler wrote on X.
Todd Richman, a co-founder of the U.S.-based group Democratic Majority for Israel, was among the pro-Israel activists who expressed outrage at reports that the banner had been taken down at the police’s request.
“So it’s acceptable at marches through London to wave Hezbollah and Hamas flags, glorify Sinwar and Nasrallah, and celebrate organizations responsible for terrorism, but somehow a sign promoting the Nova Exhibition, which memorializes young, free-spirited people who were murdered, raped and kidnapped on October 7, is treated as offensive,” Richman wrote.
Police throughout London have arrested hundreds of people for displaying flags and slogans for proscribed anti-Israel terrorist groups, including Hezbollah, Hamas and Solidarity Action. However, for months after the arrests began and also thereafter, such symbols have been on display at anti-Israel rallies in the U.K.
“The moral inversion is staggering. London and all of the U.K. is heading down a very dangerous path when sympathy for victims is condemned and banned, while open support for extremists is tolerated,” Richman wrote.
