Haifa city funding of ‘terror’ play theater draws fury
Council member claims his approval of restoration of monies was forged; MK Liberman calls on mayor to resign
A decision by the Haifa city council to unfreeze funding for a local theater that performed a controversial play highlighting the life a convicted terrorist drew a backlash on Thursday from, among others, a council member who claimed he never approved the move.
City council member Shay Blumenthal, of the Jewish Home party, claimed that he never signed on the recommendation of a review panel to reinstate funding to the al-Midan Theater.
The theater lost its state funding last month and was caught up in an imbroglio over its performance of “A Parallel Time,” a play based on the life of an Arab-Israeli terrorist who abducted and killed an IDF soldier.
Blumenthal said that he has been hospitalized since last Friday and had not put his name on a document recommending the municipality reverse the decision it made two months ago to withdraw funding from the theater.
He said a signature that was apparently his was a forgery.
The councilman also claimed that another council member only signed off on the recommendation after being told that Blumenthal also backed the decision, the Hebrew-language Ynet website reported.
“In no uncertain terms, I did not sign,” Blumenthal said. “I am vehemently opposed to the restoration of the funding and I will do all I can from my hospital bed to prevent it… Things have happened here that need to be checked.”
MK Avigdor Liberman (Yisrael Beytenu) called for Haifa Mayor Yona Yahav to resign over the refunding of the Arabic-language theater.
“If Yona Yahav justifies the fact that the money of Haifa residents goes to fund a performance that supports terror and supports terrorists under the pretext that Haifa is a cultural city of tolerance, then Yahav does not understand what culture is, and is confusing freedom of expression with freedom of incitement, and tolerance with supporting terror,” Liberman said.
“It is unacceptable that a local authority in Israel funds and supports loathsome terrorists, and the head of an authority that allows that must resign his position.”
The al-Midan theater’s production “A Parallel Time,” which documents a day in the life of a Palestinian prisoner, is said to be based on a fictionalized version of terrorist Walid Daka, an Arab-Israeli man who is serving a life sentence for abducting and murdering Israeli soldier Moshe Tamam in 1984.
On Wednesday, Yahav accepted the recommendations of the review panel and decided to cease withholding funding from the theater.
The Tamam family condemned the decision, the Ynetnews website reported.
“This is not just a decision that hurts our feelings, but an immoral decision according to which the public needs to fund those who celebrate murderers, view them as heroes and want to stage plays for them,” the family said.
In May a confrontation between Tamam’s family and the play’s actors outside the theater prompted the Haifa municipality to suspend NIS 1.2 million ($300,000) in annual funding from the theater and set up the municipal panel of inquiry to evaluate the content of the play.
The developments were the latest turn of events in a saga that began last month when Culture Minister Miri Regev led several controversial moves against what she deemed “unpatriotic” productions, drawing the ire of many artists and politicians in what the Israeli media dubbed a “cultural war.”
Regev froze state funding for the al-Midan Theater over the play — a move backed by Education Minister Naftali Bennett — sparking a conflict between herself and Israeli artists, many of whom have publicly accused the new minister of seeking to limit freedom of expression in the country through anti-democratic measures.
Regev has defended her actions, saying the issue at hand was not freedom of expression but freedom of funding.
In 1999, Daka made headlines after he became the first Palestinian prisoner permitted to wed while incarcerated, and for his protracted legal battle for a conjugal furlough.
The play mainly focuses on Daka’s wedding, his efforts to construct a new jail cell and his fellow prisoners’ attempts to smuggle in materials to build him an oud for a wedding present.
The al-Midan management and the play’s director have maintained the play was simply a fictionalized account of the day-to-day activities of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, and does not address, nor glorify, acts of terror.
The Tamam family however, says the play evokes empathy for their son’s killer. They have spearheaded the recent efforts to have the play banned and the Arabic-language theater defunded by the state.
