Israel's culture minister pressures theater over Palestinian poet
An event hosted by the Arab-Hebrew Theater in Jaffa supporting Israeli-Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour generated a harsh reaction by Israel's Culture Minister Miri Regev, who threatened to cut state funding to the theater.
Minister of Culture Miri Regev is on the attack again and with all her might. On Aug. 21, she spoke out against the new film “Foxtrot” by director Samuel Maoz, which was accepted to two important film festivals, Venice and Toronto, and is a leading nominee for the Ophir Prize (the Israeli Oscar). The minister wrote in a statement that the way the film depicts Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers tarnishes their names and plays into the hands of the haters of Israel. Regev added that funding for the film was allocated by the Israel Film Fund during the tenure of her predecessor, Limor Livnat, “and I can’t but be sorry for it.”
At the same time, the Ministry of Culture, at Regev’s direction, threatened to eliminate funding to the Arab-Hebrew Theater in Jaffa. In a letter to the minister of finance, Regev demanded to stop funding the theater because of an event the theater is hosting that calls for the release of the Arab-Israeli poet Dareen Tatour, who is accused of incitement and affinity with a terrorist organization and has been under house arrest for two years.
The event was the initiative of playwright and actor Einat Weitzman, and the theater is hosting it for a fee. In an interview with Al-Monitor, the theater’s director, Yigal Ezrati, said that two days before Regev’s letter, he received an email from extreme right-wing activist Shamai Glick, threatening harm to the theater.
For some time now, Glick has been inundating government offices with information on cultural events that he views as “anti-Israel,” and he even boasted in an interview to Israeli Calcalist that all of Regev’s decisions “started with a particular pest, and that’s me.”
