Few contemporary artists have their work displayed at the front of the main hall of parliament. For 50 years, heads of state, presidents and hundreds of government ministers and Knesset members have delivered speeches against the backdrop of Dani Karavan’s creation, the large Galilee stones covering the wall behind the podium of the Knesset speaker. Tens of thousands of visitors from Israel and abroad have gazed at the creation from the balcony. Karavan is now asking that his work be taken down. “Sometimes I’m ashamed of having made it,” the laureate of the Israel Prize (1977) said on June 8.

He spoke several days after becoming the first non-Spanish artist to be awarded a prestigious Catalan prize for cultural contribution. Previous recipients were the likes of Pablo Picasso and Joan Miro. The prize was awarded to Karavan for “Passages,” an artwork he created in Portbou in Spain as a tribute to German-Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin at the site where he committed suicide.

The harsh comments made at the annual Herzliya Conference, offering a reflection stage for Israel's top politicians and intellectuals, by one of the top Israeli artists in the world were drowned out by former Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon’s criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the attack by former Prime Minister Ehud Barak discrediting Netanyahu.

In an interview with Al-Monitor, Karavan explained why he was ashamed of his work. “On that morning [when I made this decision], I read in Haaretz that Culture Minister Miri Regev had decided to cut one-third of the state support for theaters, musical ensembles and dance troupes that do not perform across the Green Line [in West Bank settlements]. How can one tell people where to perform and where not to perform? The state has to fund the arts with integrity, in a businesslike fashion. Without any strings, only respect for the law. There’s no law that obliges artists to perform outside the borders of the state. We’re not a dictatorship.''