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Israeli left needs to face defeat, move on

By lashing out instead of accepting its electoral defeat and rehabilitating itself, the Israeli left stands to alienate even more Israelis.
Israel's Culture Minister Miri Regev arrives to the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem June 21, 2015. REUTERS/Dan Balilty/Pool - RTX1HFQD
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It has only been a few months since Miri Regev took office as minister of culture and sports, and it feels like Israelis have been teetering on the verge of a fierce public fight ever since. In one corner is the minister, who has spent years garnering a reputation for herself as an aggressive politician. In the opposing corner are the hard-core representatives of Israel’s cultural and arts scene, people who, for the most part, represent the country’s old elite: left-leaning, Ashkenazi and predominantly male. This elite was stunned by its defeat in the March 17 elections, but could do nothing but lick its wounds. This elite had believed that for the first time in years, it had a chance to overturn the government and put an end to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s grip on power. It had hoped that Israelis would return to the bosom of the Labor Party, rebranded the Zionist Camp, and that there would finally be an end to the worrying trends of nationalism, tribalism and extremism, which pose a real challenge to democracy. None of that, however, happened, and Netanyahu ended up naming an extremely vocal and belligerent member of the Knesset as his new minister of culture and sport, as if for spite.

Since Regev's appointment, every actor in the ensuing drama has played his or her role with fervor. As soon as Regev, once the chief military censor, assumed office, she announced her intent to censor cultural content if she deemed it necessary. Later, during a June 11 closed-door meeting with leading cultural figures, she said, “We received 30 seats, you got only 20,” referring to the Zionist Camp’s loss to the Likud in the elections. She also threatened the actor Norman Issa, a Christian Arab from Jaffa, saying that she would withdraw her ministry’s support for the children’s theater he had founded if he continued to refuse to perform in Jordan Valley settlements for ideological reasons.

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