Israel Cuts Funds From Critical Palestinian Theater
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
Israel froze state funding on Tuesday for an Arab theater whose play about jailed Palestinians angered the right, fueling accusations that the government aims to suppress productions it deems pro-Palestinian.
Culture Minister Miri Regev, who has threatened to divert money from institutions seeking to “hurt the state,” said that irregularities discovered in al-Midan theater’s finances led to her decision to withhold government money.
The Culture Ministry did not say how much money was being withheld, and the theater did not respond to phone calls seeking comment.
Its play “A Parallel Time,” about Palestinians in Israeli jails, was criticized by Regev and far-right Education Minister Naftali Bennett, who last week banned school trips to see it.
Both Bennett and Regev, responding to intimations they were discriminating against Arabs, have threatened to deny funding for Jerusalem’s film festival next month after learning it would include a film about Yigal Amir, the ultranationalist Jew who assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995.
The website for “A Parallel Time” said the play was inspired by the story of Walid Daka, an Arab citizen of Israel who is serving a life sentence for the 1984 abduction and killing of soldier Moshe Tamam.
Adalah, a human rights group that monitors policy toward Israel’s Arab minority, which makes up 20 percent of the population, said Bennett’s decision “violates both the artist’s freedom of expression and the rights of Arab students to watch this play as part of their school activities.”
Leading Israeli artists convened on Sunday to voice concern over Regev’s threat to withhold support for projects promoted by an Israeli Arab actor after he refused to perform in a play in a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank.
The gathering stirred national debate after one participant described the government’s right-wing supporters as “cud-chewing cattle.”
He later apologized, after his remarks were widely interpreted as an ethnic slur against Jews of Middle Eastern descent who make up the power base of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s and Regev’s conservative Likud party.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
