When will we finally have a cultured Minister of Culture?!

The Minister of Culture, Miki Zohar, has asked the Ministry of Finance to revoke public funding from the “Solidarity” Festival! Why? Because the content of the festival’s films does not suit his taste or his political views!

In his letter to Minister Bezalel Smotrich, the Minister of Culture claimed that in addition to public funding, the festival also receives support from “anti-Israeli and anti-Zionist” organizations, as he put it, listing several groups including: the Israeli-Palestinian Bereaved Families Forum, Breaking the Silence, Standing Together, and B’Tselem.

The “Solidarity” Festival is an annual event held at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque, focusing on films and events dealing with human rights. The festival screens four international documentary films about heroines and heroes who move between countries and continents, cross geographic and emotional borders, and search for home, belonging, and an opportunity to start anew. The filmmakers bring to the screen a documentary cinema that offers new, human, and meaningful perspectives — a source of pride for the Solidarity Festival for Cinema and Human Rights 2025.

His predecessor, Miri Regev, adopted the same policy of boycotting any cultural content that did not fit her taste, including award-winning Israeli and international films. In Netanyahu’s governments, Ministers of Culture are appointed who wage war on culture itself, on the basic cultural values of freedom of expression, freedom of opinion, the freedom to criticize negative phenomena in daily life and expose truths to the public; the freedom of artistic and literary creation; the freedom of thought and of expressing it through artistic means — in theater, cinema, exhibitions, and writing.

This step by the Minister of Culture has drawn a storm of harsh criticism and condemnation from figures and institutions in the fields of education, culture, literature, and politics.

The Israeli-Palestinian Bereaved Families Forum responded with justified anger, writing:"At best, Minister Zohar’s letter reflects complete ignorance. At worst — and more logically — it reflects a deliberate attempt to silence voices that do not align with his agenda. Here is what the Minister of Culture did not bother to check: more than 80 Israelis joined our forum after losing first-degree relatives — parents, children, spouses — on October 7 and in the war in Gaza. These are people who have paid the highest price, yet they still choose dialogue. They still choose peace. To call them 'anti-Israeli' is not only a moral disgrace — it is blatant hostility. We are proud to support and take part in the Solidarity Festival, to screen 'Testimonies of Pain and Hope' — six short films sharing the personal testimonies of forum members, Israelis and Palestinians who lost loved ones on October 7 and in the war in Gaza — and to hold a panel on peace education during wartime."

In last year’s “Solidarity” Festival as well, Minister Zohar opposed its existence. In a letter he sent then to Smotrich, he said the films screened at the festival “oppose the State of Israel and slander IDF soldiers.”

So when, at long last, after such a long period, will we have a cultured Minister of Culture?!

When will we have a Minister of Culture who understands — at the very least — that in a democracy, one is allowed to be critical, and above all, allowed to think differently from him?

And when will he understand that cinema is not his personal property?!!