Israel persecuting jewish artist for "degenerate art"

[DetlefK]

http://www.alternet.org/grayzone-project/degenerate-culture-inside-israeli-govts-persecution-jewish-left-and-one-its-most

In recent weeks, Israeli media revealed that the government is producing a “blacklist” of artists whose works are “politically undesirable" and plans to press charges against one artist for the crime of “desecrating the national flag."

After five separate interrogations and an investigation that has lasted for over a year, Israel’s deputy state prosecutor and the Tel Aviv police cyber crime unit revealed that they will soon indict 32-year-old video artist and playwright Natali Cohen Vaxberg over a video released in 2014, in which she can be seen defecating on the Israeli flag, among numerous other national flags. Israeli police say they are treating the investigation as “an important case."

Leading the assault on artists the government deems insufficiently nationalist are minister of culture Miri Regev and education minister Naftali Bennett. Regev and Bennett, known for their anti-African and anti-Arab racism, have taken to their demagogic roles with gusto, excoriating cultural productions that portray Palestinians in a positive light.

Under Regev’s reign as culture minister, Israeli theaters have canceled screenings of films with universalist messages, including a film about a romantic relationship between a Jewish-Israeli woman and a Palestinian man. Last month, Bennett’s education ministry rejected for the Israeli high school curriculum a novel that portrayed a Jewish-Palestinian couple.

Under the slogan “Cultural Loyalty," Regev has vowed “to make support for a cultural institution dependent on its loyalty to the state of Israel” and seeks to pull state funding from artists for “physical desecration or debasement of the flag."

...

After Shit Instead of Blood went viral, Israeli left-identified writer Haim Baram attacked Cohen Vaxberg in the Jerusalem local paper Kol Ha’Ir, writing that her work “obviously stinks and evokes revulsion” and that she is one of the “real crazies.” Baram suggested leftists should cut ranks with provocateurs like Cohen Vaxberg:

“The Left is disparaged, and its ability to defend itself admittedly still exists, but it is weaker than it has been in the past. Rightists and centrists that were very attentive to our opinions of them now demonstrate non-empathy, and even open hatred, for leftists. It won’t be easy to deal with this wave of darkness."

...

“This is a good example, and an important one, because it shows how successfully they have scared the leftist establishment, to the point that they are starting to speak out against art as concept, and as a way to legitimately protest; essentially, they are speaking out against basic freedom of speech,” Cohen Vaxberg told me. “This is the left in Israel.”

...

Meanwhile, the Israel Artists Association EMI was scheduled this week to grant a lifetime achievement award to singer-songwriter Ariel Zilber, who sang in praise of the late Israeli fascist leader Meir Kahane and supports ethnically cleaning Palestinians.



EDIT:
The author seems politically very hostile to Israel, but it's nevertheless an interesting insight into the world of art in Israel.

[6chars]

1. art.

[Little Tich]

2. Interesting article, and not anti-Israel in the least.

It's scary that the Israeli government is attacking some artistic expressions as being immoral, and blacklisting undesirable artists. It's so totalitarian...

[shira]

3. It's so totalitarian.... Ironic, that.

That's exactly what regressive left anti-Zionist Israel haters for BDS support worldwide.

Totalitarianism.

They want Israel destroyed and replaced by a Palestinian majority state that would put Hamas in control of the lives of 6 million Jews.