Prominent artist, writer and controversial left-wing activist Yair Garbuz dies at 80

Prominent painter, writer, satirist and veteran left-wing activist Yair Garbuz has died, aged 80, after battling an illness.

Born in 1945 in Givatayim, Garbuz’s artworks have been presented in dozens of galleries in Israel and around the world since the 1960s.

He won the Sokolov journalism prize in 1993 and the EMET Prize for Art, Science and Culture in 2004.

A longtime backer of the left-wing Meretz party, Garbuz caused an uproar during the 2015 Knesset election campaign when he spoke at a rally and decried the left’s loss of the country to a “handful of amulet-kissers and idol-worshipers.”

The comment, perceived as a sharp attack against the traditional and religious community, Sephardi Jews and the right wing in general, drew condemnation from across the political spectrum and was seen by some as a factor behind the center-left Zionist Union’s election defeat to the Likud party’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In 2017, then-education minister Naftali Bennett blocked Garbuz from receiving the Israel Prize due to that remark.