Culture Minister Walks Out on Anti-Israel Performance

Culture and Sport Minister Miri Regev has once again provoked the scorn of Israel’s cultural elite and the political opposition by walking out on a state awards ceremony due to an anti-Israel text recited during the evening, The Jerusalem Post reported.

Regev vociferously objected to a performance given during the Ophir Awards ceremony in Ashdod for Israeli films. The walkout and her critical comments of the ceremony and the film industry in general caused an uproar in the audience.

At a press conference afterwards, the Likud minister, “Where have we gotten? Why? In a state awards ceremony should a poem by a poet who called for the destruction of the State of Israel be heard? This is not a fight between Right and Left, this is the protection of the essence of our existence here.”

She also objected to the clenched fist salute, a symbol of resistance to oppression.

Regev added that greater “oversight is needed for recipients of state money in the Israeli film industry.”

Zionist Camp leader Isaac Herzog, said that Regev was taking Israeli cinema “back to the days of black and white,” quipping that “it would be better if she took one step further back to the days of silent film.”

Meanwhile, in Norway, Israel’s cultural offerings came under attack, but this time from the left.

Norwegian actors produced a video – using official funding – in which someone posing falsley as a spokesperson for the National Theatre of Norway calls for a boycott of Israel’s national theater, HaBima, and the entire state of Israel.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry issued a statement calling on the National Theatre of Norway, “in whose name the libelous statements were made, to clearly and immediately repudiate them as well as to take the necessary measures to have the video removed from every site.”

The Foreign Ministry added that it is actively pursuing the matter with all involved parties.