Bennett calls new Im Tirtzu campaign ’embarrassing’

“Embarrassing, unnecessary, and degrading” is how Jewish Home part leader Naftali Bennett describes controversy-courting right-wing group Im Tirtzu’s new campaign, which singles out Israeli artists and performers associated with left-wing organizations.

The campaign, launched on Wednesday and titled “Moles in Culture,” features a list of artists that includes a number of well-known Israeli authors, actors and musicians — writers Amos Oz, David Grossman and A.B. Yehoshua, actress Gila Almagor, and singers Rona Keinan and Chava Alberstein are featured — accusing them of being “moles” who support left-wing groups that receive some of their funding from foreign governments.

The campaign launched by the right-wing organization Im Tirtzu on January 27, 2016, singling out Israeli artists associated with the left-wing. (Screen capture: Im Tirtzu)

The Im Tirtzu campaign extends a drive by the group in late 2015 to accuse leading figures in Israel’s human rights organizations of being “moles” operated by foreign countries.

While Im Tirtzu’s director, Matan Peleg, maintained in interviews Thursday that the campaign was a merely a consciousness-raising effort, artists and lawmakers hit back at the group, calling it “fascist” and its campaign inciting and slanderous.