There have been fights over books, music, plays, funding for the arts and academic awards. This being Israel, they have been underpinned by fierce rhetorical exchanges about democracy, fascism and zealotry, identity, the future of the state and the fate of Jews.
A new front in the culture wars opens nearly every week, ripple effects of shifts in Israeli demographics, attitudes and politics that are shaking the society.
The latest was an attack on Wednesday by a far-right group on beloved leftist literary icons, including Amos Oz, A.B. Yehoshua and David Grossman, writers who have been considered the voice — and conscience — of the state for years. The group, Im Tirtzu, began a poster campaign calling the writers “moles in culture”, which prompted accusations of McCarthyism and worse, even from many on the right.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and several members of his conservative coalition joined the chorus of condemnation over the vilification of such Israeli cultural pillars. But some of those same ministers have been behind many of the other battles. The previous round was the brainchild of Miri Regev, the divisive and conservative Minister of Culture and Sport, who wants to deny state money to institutions that do not express “loyalty” to the state, including those that show disrespect for the flag, incite racism or violence, or subvert Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.
Ms. Regev said the aim of this “Loyalty in Culture” initiative, proposed as an amendment to a budget bill, is “for the first time to make support for a cultural institution dependent on its loyalty to the state of Israel”. She added: “I won’t be an ATM — I have a responsibility for the public’s money.”
For one well-known poet, Meir Wieseltier, the law “brings us closer to the rise of fascism and exposes its true face.” But Isi Leibler argued in The Jerusalem Post that the government is “not obliged to subsidise the demonization of the nation” and should instead support “the inculcation of love of Israel”,
The steady stream of such conflicts, over what cultural works the state should promote for schoolchildren to read or for citizens to see and hear, is part of a political drama in which the politicians of a new generation are jockeying for position as leader of the nationalist camp.
The cast includes Ms. Regev, 50, a rising power in Netanyahu’s conservative Likud Party. The Israel they represent is more religious and less beholden to the values and inheritances of the old, Europeanised elite and its dwindling left. They are unapologetic in their nationalism, supportive of both poorer Jews of Sephardic — West Asian, or Mizrahi — background and of settlers in the occupied West Bank, and unmoved by criticism from international leaders and liberal activists.
“It’s not just a culture war, it’s political, demographic and social at the same time,” said Nahum Barnea, one of Israel’s most influential columnists.
This month, the left-leaning daily Haaretz highlighted internal discussions in the ministry about what artistic works might be considered “politically undesirable” for high school students. Among the criteria, the newspaper said, were whether artists would perform in West Bank settlements and declare loyalty to the state and to the national anthem, something that is particularly problematic for Israel’s Arab citizens. — The New York Times News Service
