Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked is a very beautiful woman who insists on maintaining a solid, feminine style of dress appropriate to her role and status as well as to her being a member of a religious party, HaBayit HaYehudi. Shaked is also a very talented politician. She is an intelligent woman and an active minister, committed to promoting her right-wing agenda. People can admire her. People can argue with her. What no one can do is ignore her presence and influence on the political system and, by extension, on all of our lives.

That is why it is not at all clear what message Yam Amrani, an art student at the Shenkar College of Engineering and Design, was trying to convey when he chose to paint a colorful, sensuous portrait of Shaked with her upper body nude and include the work in an exhibition by the school’s graduates. Was he trying to humiliate Shaked because of her opinions?

The problematic portrait was discovered a day before the exhibitions opened, and at the order of the college’s president, former Minister Yuli Tamir, it was censored. Amrani was asked to cover Shaked’s face with black tape, and he did, but not before complaining to the media, “It’s a painful, fascist measure; any art lover would say the same.”

Tamir, who is herself a beautiful woman, rightfully claimed that the painting was offensive. She explained her decision by calling the painting an act of chauvinism, marred by tawdry sexism. “As a woman who has suffered from sexist attacks on more than one occasion, I will not let it happen. I respect Ayelet Shaked as a woman, and that has nothing to do with her politics.”