Haifa mayor bans Arab singer from city events after she locates it in Palestine
Yona Yahav says Lina Makoul, who won The Voice Israel in 2013, ‘had better get with the program’ after she advertises concert in ‘Haifa, PAL’
Haifa Mayor Yona Yahav on Sunday banned an Arab singer from performing in municipal events in response to her description of a concert she gave in the city the night before as having taken place in Palestine.
Lina Makoul, 31, who in 2013 won the second season of the singing competition The Voice Israel, invited her Instagram followers to the performance at the Fattoush Bar in downtown “Haifa, PAL” on Saturday night, the first date of a tour that is set to take her to Utrecht, Los Angeles, New York, Berlin and Paris.
The advertisement caused a minor furor on Hebrew social media, with right-wing Arab Israeli influencer Yoseph Haddad slamming Makoul as a “terror-supporting singer” and calling for her citizenship to be revoked.
Yahav, who last week canceled a scheduled performance by a far-right artist, wrote on Facebook Sunday morning: “Lina Makoul, you had better get with the program: Haifa is a city in the Jewish democratic state of Israel, and will remain that way forever. Nothing, certainly not you, will change that.”
“Music is meant to connect people, and it’s too bad that you use your talent to harm coexistence in the country where you were raised,” said Yahav. “As long as I’m mayor, you won’t perform in any municipal setting.”
Appended to Yahav’s post was a picture of Makoul’s advertisement with “PAL” crossed out and replaced with “ISR,” for Israel.
Despite the controversy, the venue confirmed to The Times of Israel that Makoul’s performance took place as planned. A city spokesman clarified that the ban applied only to performances arranged by the municipality, and that the city could not ban Makoul from playing private venues. The spokesman added that Makoul has made problematic statements in the past.
לינה מחול היא זמרת תומכת טרור שמבחינתה חיפה היא עיר בפלסטין ובעצם כל ישראל מבחינתה שייכת לפלסטין… חבל שנותנים לה להופיע בישראל, אם היא גם ככה לא מכירה במדינת ישראל הגיע הזמן לשלול לה את האזרחות הישראלית! pic.twitter.com/2sVHjpeAmT
— יוסף חדאד – Yoseph Haddad (@YosephHaddad) April 26, 2025
Yahav, a former Labor lawmaker and long-serving Haifa mayor who was voted back into office in March, has previously promoted coexistence between Jews and Arabs. Last year, he ordered Jewish schools in the mixed city to teach Arabic to students, and ahead of the 2021 Knesset election he formed a Jewish-Arab party that ended up sitting out the race.
According to the municipality webpage, Haifa had some 296,000 residents as of 2020, about 11.5 percent of whom are Arab. The city was home to a large Palestinian population before Israel’s War of Independence in 1948, most of whom fled.
Last week, Yahav’s municipality announced that it would scrap a planned Independence Day performance by Israeli rapper duo Subliminal and The Shadow Wednesday night due to the “divisive” views of The Shadow, an alias used by
Yoav Eliasi, who is a vocal supporter of National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir.
Makoul, whose Instagram bio reads “100% independent, 100% Palestinian,” was born in Ohio to Christian Palestinian parents. She and her family moved back to Israel when she was a young girl and settled in Acre, north of Haifa.
She had some early success after winning The Voice, opening for Queen and Adam Lambert at Yarkon Park in 2016 and being selected as the Arabic female voice for Israeli navigation app Waze.
In 2018, the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported that Makoul had refused to perform in Independence Day celebrations because of her Palestinian identity. At the time, Makoul assailed the report, noting her past volunteer work on behalf of Israeli institutions including synagogues and the Magen David Adom ambulance service.
According to Palestinian news site Raya, Makoul became an independent artist in 2020. Since then, she has also been more vocal in her criticism of Israel. In 2021, she was publicly rebuked by her personal manager for expressing support for Palestinians during violence that erupted between in mixed Jewish-Arab cities that spring.
Last May, she declared an end to “seven months of silence” about the Gaza war with a wordless song she said was meant to convey the suffering of Palestinian in the conflict, which was sparked when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel on October 7, 2023, to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages.
In August, she promoted on Instagram a fundraiser for Gazan children. She also drew criticism in some Israeli media outlets after she shared a Knesset discussion in which one lawmaker appeared to endorse the rape of Palestinian security prisoners, which she captioned: “Is that legitimate? Asking for a friend.”
The Times of Israel Community.