Finance Ministry said ignoring requests to uphold law against state disloyalty

The Finance Ministry has reportedly ignored nearly a hundred requests to enforce the so-called Nakba law, a measure aimed at punishing organizations deemed disloyal to Israel.

The law, which allows the government to withhold funding from organizations or events that present Israel’s establishment as a “catastrophe,” according to the Palestinian narrative.

In response to a Freedom of Information Act request, a ministry spokeswoman told the Haaretz daily that none of the 98 requests were heeded by the treasury’s legal adviser.

According to the newspaper, 60 of those requests were filed by right-wing activist Shai Glick, 17 were lodged by Culture and Sports Minister Miri Regev, three others were filed by other Knesset members, and the rest by private citizens.

Another 14 requests were submitted for the Finance Ministry to uphold the so-called boycott law, a untested piece of 2011 Knesset legislation that bans Israelis from calling for a boycott of Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

None of the requests filed led to the treasury withholding funds, the report said.

Last week, Regev sent a letter to Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon complaining about his ministry’s failure to enforce the law, accusing him of deliberately trying to render the legislation toothless.

“Your ministry’s failure is outrageous and I hope you instruct them to wake up and deal with this important issue,” she wrote, according to the report. “It’s inconceivable that publicly supported venues are turning into a fifth column at the expense of Israeli taxpayer.”

In her letter, Regev specifically noted two of her requests — to defund an Arab-Jewish theater in Jaffa after performances featuring readings from Palestinian prisoners and poetry the Likud minister considered to be incitement to terrorism.

Last year, the Arab Hebrew Theater held an evening in honor of Israeli Arab poet Dareen Tatour during which her poems were read, including one titled, “Resist My People, Resist.” Tatour last month was sentenced to five months in prison for “inciting terrorism” in her poems. The theater last year also staged an event called “Notebooks from Prison,” featuring texts by Palestinian security prisoners serving time in Israeli jails.

After her complaint letter, representatives from the culture and finance ministries decided the offending performances were isolated incidents and agreed to fine the theater instead of slashing its funding.

Regev has made numerous threats to cut state funding for cultural productions and organizations that appear to be disloyal to the Jewish state since assuming her role as culture minister following the 2015 elections.

Two years ago, she walked out of the Ophir awards — Israel’s equivalent of the Oscars — when a poem by late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish was read, because his work contained objections to the existence of a Jewish state.

She also panned last year’s critically acclaimed film “Foxtrot” as a defamation of Israel. The quiet story of parents grieving the loss of their son is largely allegorical, but Regev insisted the film — which includes a scene of IDF soldiers committing a war crime — amounted to “self-flagellation and cooperation with the anti-Israel narrative.” After its release, Regev asked the Israeli film funds to provide detailed information about the approval process for movies, in an attempt to clamp down on state funding for movies critical of Israeli government policies.