An anti-government protestor in Tel Aviv (Amir Levy/Getty Images)
In the city of Haifa, in northwest Israel, the sounds of Arabic, Hebrew and Russian chatter fill the streets. In the Arab-Christian neighbourhood of Wadi Nisnas lies Beit Hagefen, an Arab-Jewish cultural centre set in gleaming white stone. For 60 years, its aim has been to promote tolerance between Jews and Arabs — until last month, when one of their events was postponed and then cancelled following a recommendation from the city’s legal advisor, Yamit Klein.
The event in question was a book launch for the Hebrew translation of Apeirogon, a novel by Irish author Colum McCann that tells the story of two grieving fathers, one Israeli, the other Palestinian, who are united by the death of their daughters. The event was supported by the Parents Circle-Families Forum, a joint Palestinian-Israeli group of families who have lost relatives in the conflict.
But the launch would never take place. The official reasons for its cancellation were concerns about its “commercial aspects on municipal premises” and the potential distress it could cause to those affected by past violence — with references made to objections from families of terror attack victims. However, the move has also been interpreted as an attack on democratic principles and freedom of speech. In the eyes of many liberal Israelis, it is part of a broader, two-decade-long campaign led by Benjamin Netanyahu to suppress collaborative efforts between Israelis and Palestinians.
Such tactics aren’t confined to Netanyahu, however. The Israeli government has a long history of censorship: in 1970, for instance, the national unity government threatened to withdraw funding from the Cameri Theatre over Hanoch Levin’s play The Queen of the Bathtub. Often regarded as the most contentious theatrical work in Israel, Levin employed musical satire to critique what he saw as the nation’s militaristic tendencies, self-righteousness and racial prejudices following the triumph in the 1967 conflict. The play was stopped in 1970 after merely 19 shows, following a bomb threat at the Cameri Theatre, actors being pelted with stones in Jerusalem, and accusations branding Levin as a traitor to Israel.
But since then, Netanyahu has turned cultural censorship into an art form, encouraging journalists, politicians and charity workers to actively attack, censor and suppress any Left-wing efforts to cultivate a shared Jewish-Palestinian culture. This includes any initiatives that criticise or acknowledge the oppression or unequal treatment of Palestinians, or which hint at contentious events surrounding the nation’s birth.
His efforts have paid off. This strategic reshaping of Israel’s cultural landscape has weakened the Israeli Left by silencing any talk of the occupation, Palestinian self-determination or Israel’s Zionist ethos. And it hasn’t been difficult: in Israel, much of the cultural sector — including theatre, music, and art — is funded by taxes and therefore subject to oversight by the Knesset and the government. In 2023, for instance, Netanyahu’s culture minister, Miki Zohar, took issue with H2: Control Laboratory, a documentary about Israeli settlers’ occupation of Hebron. He ordered a retrospective examination of the film’s budget, arguing that “works that harm the state will not be funded”. That same year, Zohar also threatened to withdraw the budget from the film Two Kids a Day, about the arrest of Palestinian minors, while a performance by a 13-year-old was cancelled for fear of offending the ultra-Orthodox.
And that’s not all. In 2015, the Ministry of Education disqualified a book for school study because it describes a romance between a Jewish woman and an Arab; in 2017, the Acre Fringe Theater Festival barred a play about Palestinian prisoners, leading to a boycott by eight theatre groups; in 2022, a police officer went on stage during a performance by Palestinian rapper Tamer Nafar and ordered him to stop singing songs “against the police that incite against Israel”.
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SubscribeThat this column is fundamentally wrong can be deduced from the fact that nothing will happen to its writer in Israel – despite him writing a column that deceitfully mispresents freedom of expression in Israel. Examples of the misrepresentations:
– the launch of the Hebrew translation of Apeirogon that would “never take place”: in fact, after the mayor of Haifa canceled the event in the municipality-run Beit Hagefen due to its controversial nature at a time when the country is at war, it was moved to the private Mussawa Center in Haifa. One can argue for or against the wisdom of this decision by the mayor, but freedom of speech was unaffected.
– “Elsewhere, liberal academics have been suspended” – but the link is to cancellation abroad of Israeli academics for being Israeli, not for being liberal! This is an example of the stifling of freedom of expression in the international academic community, unrelated to Netanyahu.
– “Left-wing groups such as Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) will boycott any cultural institution associated with Netanyahu”: in fact, BDS boycotts Israel regardless of Netanyahu.
I think that Netanyahu is a disaster for Israel and the provocateurs that he appointed to the government, such as Miri Regev, are despicable. However the reality is that remarkably, even while the country is at war, there is no lack of criticism of the government and of the army’s actions in Gaza, and there is no lack of information about the plight of the Gazans. This is particularly true in the newspaper for which Nechin writes and which I read, Haaretz, but can be found everywhere.
The writer never said that anything would happen to him, instead he’s complaining that the government will only fund pieces that follow a single point of view, and will withhold funding for pieces that are critical. Him writing a piece for a foreign publication like UnHerd is unrelated to the points in the article
He would indeed not have been able to write this piece for any serious Israeli publication – because of fact-checking, not censorship.
So which of his statements are lies?
Thank you for clarifying the lies.
Israel appears to be doing something right imo by not actively funding the writers, artists & academics who hate the country & are committed to its destruction.
In the US & UK we like to do the opposite. Here in England you can only get state funding IF your practice critiques the necrocapitalistic, fascistic basis of the murderous colonial enterprise that is our country in their warped minds. Not a look-in for the ‘white saviours’ who abolished the slave trade & no cognitive dissonance apparently re the capitalist system which funds them & pays their wages: https://www.thejc.com/news/poetry-house-that-gets-100k-grant-backed-palestinian-liberation-in-wake-of-hamas-terror-aenqi4s7
Don’t worry our Conservative government have continued their admirable record of demonstrating their respect for this country when Oliver Dowden threatened to withdraw funds to the National Trust for acknowledging the role of slavery in the British tea trade. (just one of many of my favourite Tory policies). I mean imagine trying to ruin some visitor’s experience of a country house with some nuance like that – no thank you and well done Oli.
The article I cite tries to criticise Dowden, saying that he violated something called the Haldane principle whereby decisions about the allocation of research funds should be made by researchers rather than politicians and that where politicians have dictated research funding, as in 1930s Germany, the results have been catastrophic – well we’re a long way from that I reckon!
Of further comfort is the fact that the information booklet on which applicants for naturalised British citizenship are examined, Life in the United Kingdom: A Guide for New Residents, now thankfully omits mention of the role it previously conceded that slaves had some agency in the abolition movement and also says that slavery was illegal in the 18th century, when apparently it wasn’t – no doubt some other wokish fantasy.
Bearing all this in mind I feel we can say that the crashing of the economy, the worst squeeze in living standards since the Napoleonic wars, 4 million children in poverty, the £29bn spent on a dysfunctional test and trace system whose investment went straight to the shareholders of private companies – all that I am ready to forgive if only this government can be left alone to continue its task, critical to our dignity and security, of producing a nation of blind patriots where the interests of the country and of the government are understood to be the same and so any criticism of the government – now or in the past – is shamed as betrayal of the country. After all, given that a country’s elite always best embody a nation’s values (how else did they get to the top?), criticising them is always unpatriotic.
The most interesting thing about this article is its timing. We’ve recently witnessed truly alarming interference in Israeli politics by the Biden administration. Acting as the administration’s mouthpiece, Chuck Schumer openly called for Netanyahu’s ouster. Ami Dror, the head of Israel’s militant leftwing protest movement, credibly claims to be coordinating with the Biden administration in his efforts to bring down the Netanyahu government. And this extraordinary meddling is happening during a war that Israel cannot afford to lose. Netanyahu clearly understands that Israel will have lost if Hamas remains intact as an organized military force in Gaza.
Gantz is Netanyahu’s main rival, and he understands that Hamas cannot be allowed to win. It makes no sense to put out 3/4 of a fire, is along the lines of how Gantz put it.
So we really have to ask why the Obammunists are so keen on undermining Israel’s efforts to defeat Hamas. And we have to be glad that the Israeli public appears to see through the anti-Israel machinations.
When the Israeli government that is entirely reliant on American money and munitions for its conflict continuously ignores what those funding them are telling them, they’ve only got themselves to blame when their bosses decide to pull the pin and go with somebody else.
If I ignored everything my boss said despite him paying my wages I imagine I’d soon be replaced in the same manner
No. Israel is in this predicament because of the ruinous Iran appeasement policies, first of Obama, then of Biden.
It’s in the American interest for Israel not to let the Biden administration’s bizarre dysfunction prevent it from achieving its objectives. Nothing less than the survival of civilization against barbarism is on the line.
If Biden’s priority is the survival of Hamas, he’s not fit for his office and should not seek reelection.
Why is it in Americas interests? What value is Israel to the States?
‘Kosher Nostra.’…..surely you’ve heard of it?
When they can murder aid workers with impunity I’m (unfortunately) starting to think you may have a point
Israel has not “murdered” aid workers. Aid workers, journalists and non combattants people staying in the fulcrum of a military conflict are always at risk. Many more such people were killed during recent Western interventions for example in Libya, the course as for Russian attacks…..
Well said, Sir!
I have not, what are you referring to? Details?
American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE).
The barbarism of the pro-Hamas lobby is a danger to the US.
What’s left of the West cannot afford for the US to knuckle under to the pro-Hamas lobby.
A victory for Hamas is a victory for the barbarism of the pro-Hamas lobby and a defeat for the US and what’s left of the West.
I’m seeing very little difference these days between the barbarism of Hamas or the IDF. I fail to see how butchering aid workers, killing well over 10,000 women and children and pushing 2 million people to the brink of starvation is any better than the terrorism of Hamas
Really? Then what does that say about you?
The only democracy in the region, a presumed nuclear power, lots of shared cultural values… why wouldn’t we want them as close friends?
As Graeme Macdonald so appositely reminded us yesterday: – “Jews and the state of Israel are permanently exempt from criticism”.
Until this lamentable state of affairs is rectified there will be NO peace in the Middle East.
This is precisely the opposite of the truth. Israel is forced to defend itself from criticism for trying to destroy Hamas whose strategy is to get as many of the people who voted for it killed. You think criticism of Israel is somehow morally sanctioned? Are you living under a rock?
Israel is supposed to be a member of the Civilised Club (ieThe West.) but is NOT playing by the rules and thus risks being ‘blackballed’. QED?
Obama is a shill for Islam, bought and paid for, no ifs, no buts
More Tosh. Rarely worth reading anything about Netanyahu from a writer from Haaretz. Why does Unherd persist in this? It’s like getting someone from the Morning Star/Guardian to write about the Conservative Party. Haaretz are probably the most left wing medis outlet in Israel and about 4 % of the market there.
I don’t like Netanyahu much but this nonsense.
What’s incorrect about what has been written?
They publish this kind of thing because the State Department pays them to. The timing is no coincidence, Washington is actively and desperately seeking regime change to please isalmists at home and abroad.
You haven’t said specifically which pieces in the article are lies though have you?
“Terrified of losing out on public funding, or provoking a public backlash, Left-wing cultural figures are already tiptoeing around certain political subjects. Yet pandering to the government can create other problems, as Left-wing groups such as Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) will boycott any cultural institution associated with Netanyahu. As a result, even artists who critique his policies, but rely on government support, may be vulnerable to boycotts themselves.”
So it sounds like if someone was to get a job doing office or construction work from say 9-5 than they could bypass the self-censorship issues simply by being self-reliant and not dependent on the government?
This article stands reality on its head. By now, every thinking person recognizes that the most ruthless censoriousness in the US, the UK, and Canada comes from the cultural hegemons of the “progressive” left.
As a contributing writer for Ha’aretz, the author should know that Ha’aretz has enforced its brand of progressive purity. Gadi Taub is an example of a first-rate Ha’aretz journalist who refused to toe the party line and had his position terminated as a result. Other Ha’aretz writers, who used to express more heterodox views, began toeing the line at around the same time.
The premise of this article is that the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians arises from the “fact” that they don’t “understand” each other and that the two “communities” can come together in cultural collaboration. This is good old fashioned liberal naivete.
The trouble is that Palestinian society is fundamentally undemocratic. In fact it is anti-democratic both in its conception of itself and in its attitude to Israel.
It is like this because such attitudes are subsidized and morally sanctioned by NGOs, the UN, and the global left.
Nechin’s argument is classic progressivism. His vision of cultural collaboration is one where the two world-views, the anti-democratic Palestinian and the “misunderstanding” Israelis will be relatavised. This is offering a leg-up to the anti-democrats who should not be given the time of day.
Like all left-wing interpretations of the conflict he ascribes no agency to the Arabs. You will look at the millions of words penned by the anti-Right and pro-Palestinian left and not find in its extended civic ontology any concept of Palestinian agency. Why? Because that would mean Palestinians must take responsibility for their response to Israel and its concerns.
Nechin’s analysis is not only wrong. It is part of the problem. It is an undeserved and unearned psychic subsidy to a population whose violent Jew-hatred is precisely its product.
The government not subsidizing culture is not censorship. In fact it is the state subsidy of culture that leads to censorship.
To persecute people who speak out against the war is wrong and a mistake. But believing them is also wrong and a mistake almost as great.
For some reason I remembered now: Great idea. Wrong species
Israel is currently in a state of war. In fact it has never been offered peace. So perhaps that context should be taken into account. Whatever Netanyahu undoubted many faults, the real reason that Israeli Palestinian (originally “Arab”) coexistence is difficult or impossible it’s because of Arab Muslim rejectionism of any Jewish majority state whatever in the region, a role today being played by the powerful state of Iran and its proxies.
Tell us how many pro-Israel plays have been staged in Gaza? Something tells me they couldn’t find any dissenting Palestinian actors to pelt and saved their pebbles for the intifada instead.
Clearly, the Israeli left has interiorized the double standard the west applies on Israel. No one is wasting their time scrutinizing freedom of speech in Gaza, let alone pondering the Palestinian’s freedom to represent the enemy perspective. A laughable suggestion. Hamas doesn’t have to police any theaters (do they have any?) because it has never occurred to anyone in Gaza to stage a play about the Israeli perspective. At best, your article implies that the Palestinians are so beneath the Israelis that they wouldn’t be capable of seeing the other side’s perspective— grossly condescending. At worst, that the Israelis are the more hateful party and should overcorrect that— a difficult claim to make after October 7th.
I’ll be pro-Palestinian for once and say that the Israeli left should learn a lesson from the Palestinians. They aren’t busy with honest intellectual self-flagellations in hopes of earning brownie points for being so righteously self-reflective. No, no, they’re busy deceitfully physically self-flagellating to better blame Israel on TikTok. Read the BBC or the NYT, or brave central London on a Saturday to see which strategy works better…
Do you actually resent the lite censorship of pro-nazi sentiment in the UK during the Second World War? It’s easy to imagine English actors with nazi penchants being stoned in the streets of London, if not arrested. During the war, the English were deprived of Wagner at the opera house, Goethe in schools and sauerkraut in restaurants. The monarchs discreetly anglicized their surname from Battenberg to Mountbatten. Was this evil censorship or simply expected conduct during a bloody war? Can we not learn from history that civilized societies avoid championing their enemies when their own men are dying in the fight. And if you refuse to accept that avoiding to cheer on a genocidal enemy is common sense, then perhaps you could see it as a matter of politeness. Granted, not an especially Israeli trait.
Yes, times may have changed since the Second World War but the analogy applies to contemporary scenarios; show me the plays about the Russian perspective in Kiev at the moment ?
No, behaving patriotically doesn’t mean forgoing freedom of speech. It is crucial and it is courageous to form a vocal opposition, but only when the criticism is meant constructively. Instead of philosophizing about the right to represent the Palestinian POV in arts and other perceived micro agressions to free speech, criticize military strategy or more tangible evidence of corruption in the government. And for god’s sake, do it in Hebrew. Israel doesn’t need help losing the PR war. The fact your article is in English betrays your intentions here. This isn’t meant for helpful internal purposes. It’s virtue signaling to the world, written evidence that you Etan wash your hands of boorish Israel— lest someone think you also haven’t read Chekhov.
The left is so destructive. They start off with weasel words that sound perfectly reasonable and before you know it, end with victory for the most barbaric and inhuman regime they can find.
Yes, that fact hasn’t escaped me either. It’s as if they use Hamas atrocities as a proxy to unleash all their own violent tendencies. In their mind hatred and bigotry are unpardonable sins unless directed at the ‘correct’ targets – in this case Israelis who have somehow now become the poster boy for Whiteness.
The strange twist in all this is that this is the end-game of Critical Theory – an epistemology of resentment and critique used and expanded upon by Jewish intellectuals and their fellow travelers to weaken Western social foundations. It is nothing more than weaponized scholarship that can be appropriated by any group of people who feel oppressed to justify any act of violence towards those they perceive as oppressors. It simply doesn’t matter if the ‘oppressed’ are bloodthirsty criminals and the ‘oppressors’ are women and children. The oppressed are always good and the oppressors are always evil. Many Westerners have been taught to adopt this Manichean view of conflict hence the public condemnation of Israel military action and the radio silence on Hamas atrocities.
What a crybaby this author is. When is the next time Fiddler on the Roof and Yentl will grace the silver screen in Ramallah and Jenin? What ever happened to those inter-faith groups in the kibbutzim right next to Gaza talking about their shared feelings? The Jewish participants are likely sitting in tunnels with no light or food for months if they weren’t murdered in early October.
Oh horror! An anti-Israel play couldn’t get government funding? 2 plays? Censorship! “…militaristic tendencies, self-righteousness and racial prejudices…”? Let’s guess why Israel has militaristic tendencies and self-righteousness. I’m confused about racial prejudices with all the Ethiopian Jews and B’nay Menasha everywhere.
There’s also another misconception that readers should be aware of. Israel bought land with money. Israel bought so much that Arafat pronounced, and it still holds today, the death penalty to any Arab that sells his land to a Jew. Summarily executed. It’s true, many Arabs left after being warned by Nassar and his ilk they might be killed in the crossfire of any number of unprovoked invasions. Arabs sided with the enemy and lost property. Such is war.
Artists rely on government support? Let them get funding from Qatar and if people protest, well that’s life in the free world. You don’t see many protesting Abbas or Putin. An Irish author? Who cares? There’s so much freedom in Israel few if any other countries have as much. It’s a time of war and right now it’s most important to promote patriotism and unity. There’s enough derogation against Israel going on in the world right now. There doesn’t have to be more coming from the state itself.
Etan, mate, you’re clutching at straws. Talking of censorship and freedom of speech: Here in UK a cinema chain was forced to cancel a screening of movie about the daughter of Mohammed because of protests by Muslims; Batley school teacher still in hiding for showing cartoon of Mohammed; school kid who scuffed the Quran was hung out to dry by his school; then of course there’s Salman Rushdie; and don’t forget Charlie Hebdo and Samuel Paty, or the spectre of backdoor blasphemy laws in Sweden and Denmark. We’re self-censoring our own freedom of speech out of fear, and you cannot come up with anything remotely of that magnitude in Israel, a country literally at war and that, at 29 in the Democracy Index, scores higher than the USA, plus all African and Muslim countries. Why not take a look at those, if you’re genuinely interested in freedom of speech and censorship, rather than singling out Israel and holding it to a higher standard you don’t apply elsewhere? There’s a word for that. And while you’re about it, why not have a look at yourself in the mirror? Pathetic.