A Belgian model has come under fire after posing naked in front of the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Marisa Papen, from Flanders, Belgium, can be seen reclining in a plastic chair on a roof top above the religious site, and in another nude snap she climbs up a pole flying the Israeli flag.
Ms Papen posed for the controversial photos just months after another nude shoot in a temple complex in Luxor, Egypt saw her spending a night in a prison cell.
The Western Wall is located in the Old City of Jerusalem and is considered a holy site by Jews, Muslims and Christians.
The photos of Ms Papen were taken during a three-day trip through Israel, with her visit to Jerusalem coinciding with Israel’s Independence Day.
‘While the rest of Jerusalem was celebrating, I was enjoying the afternoon sun on a rooftop after a morning of running around in the desert – capturing our last frames of the trip,’ Ms Papen wrote on her blog.
The stunt sparked angry reactions online, with a number of people taking to Twitter to accuse her of being disrespectful.
Defending the photos on her blog, Ms Papen said she ‘wanted to push the bounderies [sic] of regilion [sic] and politics even further.’
Some have accused her of specifically trying to offend Jews, as the the Islamic Dome of the Rock shrine and the Al-Aqsa Mosque to the right have been cropped out of the photo of her and the Western Wall.
‘If you really want to push the boundaries of religion and politics you missed the point. Go back to Jerusalem and take that picture again with wide frame – while you can see Al-Aqsa + Dome of the Rock,’ one person wrote on her blog.
In September last year, Papen was forced to spent the night in an Egyptian prison after she was caught posing for a nude photoshoot at a temple.
Security guards spotted her and her photographer at the temple in Luxor, southern Egypt, and they were both arrested.
After a night in a prison cell with at least 20 other inmates, the pair were brought before a judge and released with a warning.
