Culture minister to enforce anti-left national culture
Articles from John Reed, FT and Zvi Bar’el, Ha’aretz on ‘culture wars’, and a sober piece on BDS referred to in Reed’s first article.
Culture minister Miri Regev waves the flag to start the war against disloyal artists and intellectuals. Photo by Amir Avramovich
Israeli culture wars intensify
By John Reed, Financial Times
June 17, 2015
Miri Regev, Israel’s new far-right minister of culture, has antagonised the country’s artists by telling them she will monitor their output and dispense state arts funding as she sees fit, in steps they say amount to censorshipf
To vent their anger at Ms Regev’s proposed controls, they are proposing organising a strike which — if it were to take place — would be the first of its kind. Hundreds of Israeli artists have signed a petition accusing the new minister of supporting “anti-democratic moves”.
The conflict has laid bare the deepening cultural divide between Israel’s coastal elite and the conservative voters who re-elected Benjamin Netanyahu in March for a fourth term.
The battle lines being drawn by Ms Regev in her culture remit echo the uncompromising stance taken by Mr Netanyahu’s new rightwing coalition in other areas, including the tough rhetoric it is using to discredit a gathering international boycott movement [see below] it accuses of delegitimising the Jewish state.
Ms Regev, a firebrand Likudnik and former military spokesman who once likened African asylum seekers to “cancer”, put artists on notice when she said: “I can decide where the money goes,” and: “The artists will not dictate to me.” She also said: “We received 30 seats; you only got 20” — a reference to Likud’s poll showing relative to that of the centre-left Zionist Union, in remarks making it clear that she saw the current arts establishment as a preserve of the opposition left.
What the Israeli media is dubbing the “culture war” intensified after Oded Kotler, an actor, on Sunday appeared to refer to voters of Mr Netanyahu’s Likud party as “cud-chewing cattle” at an emergency meeting of artists. “Imagine your world is quiet — without books, without music, without poems, a world where no one disturbs you and no one stops the nation from celebrating the 30 (Knesset) seats which are followed by a herd of straw and cud-chewing cattle,” Mr Kotler said to gleeful applause.
Mr Kotler later apologised for his remarks. Ms Regev said in a Facebook post: “Kotler’s remarks express in my view, a cultural darkness.” Ms Regev’s spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment from the FT.
“She [Ms Regev] declared right on the first day of her new job, ‘I am going to censor you,’” Mr Kotler told the Financial Times. “That was enough to get all these people to rebel and protest against it, which I think is something we should have done some time ago.”
Ms Regev, who as an MP since 2009 has favoured tough legislation cracking down on dissent by Palestinians, also threatened to cut off funding to the Elmina theatre company in Jaffa, southern Tel Aviv. This came after Norman Issa, the theatre’s co-founder and a popular Arab-Israeli television actor, said that for political reasons he would not perform in the Jordan Valley in the occupied West Bank.
Playwright Bashar Murkus sitting in Almidan theatre, Haifa, during an interview on June 17, 2015. Ms Regev has just withdrawn the theatre’s funding in order to close his play A Parallel Time – and punish the theatre for putting it on. Photo by Reuters
Separately, Ms Regev on Tuesday suspended funding for a Haifa theatre running a controversial play by an Arab playwright, Bashar Murkus. The play, A Parallel Time — based on real people — tells the story of six prisoners in an Israeli jail, one of whom was convicted of killing an Israeli soldier. Mr Murkus protested that his play was “not about the soldier” but more broadly about the rights of prisoners. “In theatre, we can bring up important issues and ask questions,” he said.
Sunday’s meeting, at Mr Issa’s Elmina Theatre, included about 200 disgruntled performers, who made impassioned speeches decrying Ms Regev, which were punctuated by jeering from rightwing hecklers.
The meeting descended at several points into shouting and came close to physical brawling, giving a vivid sense of the raw emotions behind the issues at stake.
“We can’t allow ourselves to move one millimetre from our beliefs,” said Miki Gurevich, one of the participants. “Because if we move a millimetre, then someone will come and ask us to move a centimetre, then a metre — then you just cannot stand up any more for your beliefs.”
At one point, a heckler shouted: “Leftists!” and “Gang of criminals” at the artists, before himself being heckled out of the room.
“If until now the Israelis thought they weren’t an apartheid country, the things Miri Regev is doing are leading Israel to be an apartheid country,” said Mira Awad, an Arab-Israeli artist and singer. “You are giving the [boycott movement] what it wants.”
Actor Oded Kotler. ‘There is no reason to be offended by an actor who calls a quarter of the Israelis beasts, just like there is no need to pay attention to anyone from the other side who calls another quarter of the people traitors and anti-Zionists’. Caption by Ynet, photo by Yaron Brener
‘Illiberal democracy’ in action
Minister Miri Regev seeks to destroy the old cultural memory and replace it with a fundamentalist national culture.
By Zvi Bar’el, Ha’aretz
June 17, 2015
“I have no doubt that every Egyptian is very familiar with the scope of the disaster and the threat that has befallen our nation. We aren’t talking just about the Israeli military threat or the American dictates or the weakness of Egyptian foreign policy. This weakness has spread to every corner. There is no theatre, film or scientific research left in Egypt. All that remains is festivals, conferences and mountains of lies,” charged Egyptian author Sonallah Ibrahim at the awards ceremony for the national literary prize in 2003.
Ibrahim, who won the prize of 100,000 Egyptian pounds, refused to accept it from then-Culture Minister Farouk Hosny. After a few seconds of shocked silence, the roof of the Opera House rang with thunderous applause. The culture minister writhed in his chair, and after the applause died down, he said, “Ibrahim’s words are a mark of honour for the government. For if it weren’t so democratic, Ibrahim would not be able to utter his biting criticism.”
Israel’s culture minister has a different interpretation of the meaning of democracy. It more closely resembles that of Egypt’s former and current presidents, Hosni Mubarak and Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi, both of whom cultivated elites who became known in Egypt as “the regime’s intellectuals.” The natural next step would be to adopt the laws of Egypt, Turkey and Iran, which forbid harming the reputation of the state, its religion or its army. Miri Regev could even dispense with the legislation and use her own ministerial powers to establish a “state culture” that would be created only by “the state’s” artists and intellectuals.
But Regev isn’t the problem, just a symptom. She is only a log bobbing in the rapids down which Israel is plummeting, from its status as a liberal democracy to what American journalist Fareed Zakaria terms “illiberal democracy”: a democracy in which procedure, elections and public participation in them are more important than liberal values like freedom of expression and minority rights. Regev clings to the 30 Knesset seats her Likud party won as proof of the majority’s wishes, and consequently as a legitimate democratic prop for her authority to shape the culture according to her own wishes.
This is a familiar error. The great democrat Alexander Lukashenko, the dictator of Belarus, calmed the public after he was elected by a large majority in the 1994 election by promising, “There will be no dictatorship. I come from the people, and I will work for the sake of the people.” Go tell that to the Belarusian people. His colleague, Askar Akayev, the ruler of Kyrgyzstan, also won 60 percent of the vote in an election, and within two years he had passed draconian orders via a referendum that turned him into a constitutional dictator.
Zakaria draws a distinction between, on one hand, a democracy that bolsters the government’s power, and, on the other, constitutional liberalism, which seeks to limit the government’s power. Regev is a great believer in the democracy that gave “her” 30 seats, and sees liberalism as a threat that contradicts “her” democracy. And she isn’t wrong. But in advancing this view, Regev shoots the state in the foot – because her Israel has lost the strategic asset inherent in the title of “the only democracy in the Middle East.” There’s a plethora of democracies of the type now being established in Israel: democracies that venomously settle accounts with the culture created prior to their establishment. For instance, that of Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt, which tried to destroy the culture created under the monarchy, or that of the Islamic revolution in Iran, which persecutes symbols of “Western” culture. (Both countries, incidentally, hold elections as democracies usually do.)
Like them, Regev is now settling accounts with the “left’s” culture – i.e., with what existed before her. She seeks a historic rectification, a revolution that will destroy the old cultural memory and replace it with a fundamentalist national culture. And she’ll succeed. Because she is the people, and she “came to work for the sake of the people.”
A group advocating a boycott gains pace as Israeli politicians fight back
By John Reed, Financial Times
June 12, 2015
Israel is not at war, but its political leaders are showing rare unity over what they see as a potent new threat to the survival of the Jewish state.
That threat is Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), an umbrella campaign of international activists that models itself on the movement that helped topple apartheid in South Africa. Though a decade old, BDS’s message — that Israel should be isolated economically for its occupation of Palestinian lands — has appeared to come into its own in recent weeks. A series of votes by overseas groups condemning Israel and a high-profile flap between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and Orange, the French telecoms group, have contributed to the sense that BDS is becoming a force to be reckoned with.
Israel’s leaders, who had largely ignored the BDS movement in the past, are fighting back, describing the battle against it in bellicose language befitting a military campaign. “Delegitimisation must be fought, and you are on the front lines,” Mr Netanyahu told an anti-BDS summit in Las Vegas last weekend organised by the billionaires Sheldon Adelson and Haim Saban, which reportedly raised tens of millions of dollars.
Yair Lapid, a centre-right opponent of Mr Netanyahu, echoed the sentiment, saying Israel faced a new “external enemy”. Isaac Herzog, Israel’s centre-left opposition leader, described BDS as a “new intifada” — a reference to the two violent Palestinian uprisings against Israeli occupation.
The condemnations from three very different politicians reflect the fears about what a successful BDS campaign could mean for Israel. Boycotts and divestment could damage Israel’s economy. And there are also concerns that it could leave the country internationally isolated — a real worry at a moment when Israel’s relationship with its closest ally, the US, is particularly strained.
The BDS movement was boosted by Mr Netanyahu’s re-election in March, after a campaign in which he pitched for far-right votes by sowing fear about Arab Israeli citizens’ voting power and saying he would not allow the creation of a Palestinian state. The tactics shocked some of Israel’s close allies and brought sharp criticism from the White House.
After his victory, Mr Netanyahu has again voiced support for a two-state solution, but few of Israel’s overseas diplomatic partners believe it will happen soon. Even the Czech Republic, one of Israel’s staunchest allies in Europe, warned this week that its support could not be counted on, and that Israel was sliding towards the status of South Africa under minority white rule. “We want to avoid initiatives against Israel, but it is getting more difficult with the current government and with the opposition to the two-state solution,” says Lubomir Zaoralek, the Czech foreign affairs minister. “What is the alternative, to deteriorate towards apartheid?”
The dimming of hope for a negotiated solution to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, BDS activists say, buoyed their argument that only concerted economic pressure on Israel will sway its actions. “We are winning the battles for hearts and minds across the world, despite Israel’s still hegemonic influence among governments in the US and Europe,” says Omar Barghouti, a Palestinian activist and co-founder of BDS.
The growing boycott campaign marks a new phase in Palestinians’ conflict with Israel, in which the two sides’ arguments are increasingly hashed out not by diplomats and heads of state but by third parties — sporting and student associations, church groups, fund trustees — on the international stage.
In emotive and even offensive terms, boycott advocates and Israel supporters are fighting over painful questions at the heart of the conflict: is Israel fighting a lonely battle against Islamists regionally and antisemites overseas? Or is it a racist rogue nation itself? Do the Palestinians share the blame for their predicament, or is Israel at fault for the failure to agree a two-state solution over the two decades since the Oslo accords?
Israel’s defence has been so robust that some believe it is giving BDS free advertising. Mr Netanyahu has named Gilad Erdan, a senior MP in his Likud party, as minister of information and strategic affairs, with an explicit brief to fight the boycott movement. Tzipi Hotovely, a hardline nationalist MP, has been given a BDS brief as deputy foreign minister.
“Classic antisemitism was to accuse Jews in a set of lies, and the way we see BDS, it’s the same pattern,” Ms Hotovely told the Financial Times. “The motivation is very clear: it’s the delegitimisation of Israel as the national Jewish state.”
Israeli officials say BDS singles out Israel for condemnation while ignoring other countries that abuse human rights. They add that some of the movement’s demands, including the right of return for millions of Palestinian refugees, would bring Israel’s destruction.
BDS rejects all these points. They say Israel’s accusations of antisemitism are a form of bullying and shutting down dissent, and that their platform of equal rights for all threatens Israel no more than did civil rights movements in the US or South Africa.
Notwithstanding the movement’s triumphant tone — and Israel’s robust reaction — BDS has not been nearly as successful as its supporters claim, nor its opponents fear. Several pension funds and other institutional investors, mostly in Europe, have divested from companies with links to Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which most of the world considers illegal. In a few cases, companies have quit Israel or avoided investing after coming under pressure.
Veolia Environnement, the French infrastructure group, in April sold most of its Israeli holdings to a private equity group after campaigners criticised it for involvement in projects such as the Jerusalem tram line, which links the city’s Jewish west to a settlement. Safege, another French company, recently axed plans to back an Israeli cable car project in the city’s occupied east after coming under pressure.
Many of the movement’s achievements have been symbolic, as in last week’s vote by Britain’s National Union of Students to support BDS, which brought a sharp reaction from Mr Netanyahu that was perhaps disproportionate to the group’s importance. The Palestinian football association last month won support from Fifa, the world football federation, for the creation of a committee to probe Palestinian grievances against Israel relating to the sport. Israelis worry they will pursue similar steps ahead of the 2016 Olympic Games.
Some critics of Mr Netanyahu believe he is cynically using BDS as a populist rallying point, and building it up as a paper tiger, to mobilise the Israeli public for political purposes.
However, there are signs that Israel’s disquiet over BDS is genuine. This week an Israeli financial newspaper covered a leaked government report estimating that BDS could cost Israel’s economy $1.4bn a year. The estimate included lower exports from the settlements in keeping with the EU’s plans to begin labelling goods made there — not part of the BDS movement, although many Israelis lump the two things together. The Rand Corporation, the US think-tank, says the costs could be more than three times higher: $47bn over 10 years.
The potential stakes for business became clear last week when Stéphane Richard, Orange chief executive, told a Cairo business group that his company, which has come under pressure from campaigners, would leave Israel if it could. The remarks infuriated Israel’s government and many customers. Mr Richard later apologised and travelled to Israel to confirm Orange’s “commitment to Israel”.
In addition to Israel’s offensive against BDS, its supporters overseas are marshalling forces. The US states of Illinois and South Carolina have passed measures to discourage companies and institutions in their states from supporting boycotts. Fringe elements on both sides are also resorting to ugly tactics. Last year in South Africa, BDS activists targeted Woolworths and left severed pigs’ heads inside what they thought was the kosher section of a Cape Town store. (In fact it was the halal meat section.) Woolworths still stocks Israeli products.
In the US, a new website called Canary Mission runs names and pictures of BDS supporters, including university students, with the apparent aim of jeopardising their job prospects. Critics compare it to McCarthyite tactics.
Ultimately the boycott movement’s success will hinge not only on financial resources or operational tactics, but on winning arguments. BDS activists express confidence they will prevail.
“While regimes of oppression may be strong, when people are resilient, organised and reach out to people of conscience around the world, we can win,” says Rafeef Ziadah, a BDS activist. “This is not to say that it will be easy, but the tide is certainly turning.”
Link
Play set in Israeli Prison Imperils Arab Theatre, NY Times, June 13th, 2015