PM to boycott awards ceremony over recipient’s ‘cattle’ criticism
Netanyahu sees ‘no need to honor’ playwright Oded Kotler, who once called right-wing voters ‘cud-chewing cattle’
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will reportedly boycott a prestigious awards ceremony hosted by his own bureau because one of the prizes is to be given to a theater director who once criticized right-wing voters as “cud-chewing cattle.”
In 2015, Oded Kotlar caused controversy when he responded to comments by Culture Minister Miri Regev, who had told members of Israel’s artistic community, “We got 30 Knesset seats. You got a total of 20,” referring to Likud’s victory in that year’s elections.
Shortly afterward, during an emergency cultural meeting in Jaffa, Kotler focused on what he termed the recent “anti-democratic measures” taken by Education Minister Naftali Bennett and Regev in relation to members of the artistic community.
He told the assembled crowd of artists, “Imagine your world is quiet — without books, without music, without poems, a world where no one disturbs you and no one stops the nation from celebrating the 30 [Knesset] seats, which are followed by a herd of straw and cud-chewing cattle.”
Kotler, an actor, director and playwright, is one of two recipients of this year’s Emet Prize in the category of culture and arts — acting and directing in the theater.
Netanyahu told the prize committee that he saw “no reason to honor” a person who had described his voters as cud-chewing cattle, Channel 2 News reported Monday.
The annual prizes for excellence, worth a total of $1 million, are awarded by the A.M.N. Foundation for the Advancement of Science, Art and Culture in Israel, under the auspices of the Prime Minister’s Office.
The prize winners are selected by appointees of the foundation and the Prime Minister.
Yevgeny Aryeh, director of the acclaimed Gesher Theater in Tel Aviv, which was founded in 1991 by Aryeh and other immigrants from the former Soviet Union, also won the prize in the field of art and culture.
Other recipients for the 2017 Emet prize are: Prof. Jacob Ziv for computer and electronic engineering; Prof. David Heyd for philosophy; Prof. Zelig Eshhar and Prof. Alexander Levitzki for cancer research; and Prof. Assaf Razin for economics.
The Times of Israel Community.