'What's happening is fascism': artists respond to Israel's 'war on culture'
Source: The Guardian
Banned books, fines for theatre groups, playlists for radios, funding axed for ‘disloyal’ art … do Israel’s artists feel under attack from culture minister, and ex-brigadier-general, Miri Regev?
The term “loyalty in culture bill” sounds like something out of Nineteen Eighty-Four. However, last month, Israel’s minister for culture and sport introduced just that to a parliamentary committee, which responded with a mixture of rightwing approval and leftwing condemnation. Many of Israel’s newspapers are now happy to mention Miri Regev in the same breath as Joe McCarthy.
In her short time as minister, the former army brigadier-general responsible for the military’s media relations has been criticised for her attacks on artists’ freedom of speech, the latest being her proposal to give government funding only to art loyal to Israel.
“What is happening in Israel now is fascism,” says David Tartakover, a graphic artist famous for designing politically inspired work, including the logo for the Peace Now campaign in 1978. He believes this is the culmination of a slow creep of limitations that began after the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. Over the last year, he says, things have visibly worsened.
A snapshot of what Tartakover is referring to would include Naftali Bennett, the minister of education, banning Dorit Rabinyan’s novel Borderlife, about a relationship between a Jewish woman and Palestinian man, from school reading lists because it promoted “assimilation”; and the rightwing extra-parliamentary political group Im Tirtzu denouncing two of Israel’s most internationally recognised writers, Amos Oz and David Grossman, as being “infiltrators inside [Israeli] culture”.
Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/mar/01/israel-loyalty-in-culture-bill-debate-fascism-miri-regev-art-free-speech
= new reply since forum marked as read
http://www.timesofisrael.com/justice-ministry-oks-conditioning-arts-funding-on-loyalty/
Why should a state fund artists when they do the above? No other nation would subsidize that kind of crap. Artists can still do whatever they want, it's a free country. But taxpayers shouldn't have to fund that shit.
Next, fascist Kahanist artists who create vileness that calls for all Arabs being killed will call Israel fascist for pulling subsidies from them. I'm pretty sure BDS'ers would criticize Israel (and call it fascist) for NOT pulling the funding from those Kahane asswipes.
But nevertheless, 100 regressive Lefty points for the misleading, delegitizing click-bait.
