Members of Israel’s artistic community have filed a lawsuit against the country’s ministry of culture as artists and cultural institutions increasingly feel threatened under culture minister Miri Regev, who has attempted, among other things, to put laws in place that would tie funding to “loyalty to the state”, thus curbing …

On 6 September 2016, Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour heads back to trial facing charges that one of her poems posted on YouTube and two Facebook posts constitute “incitement to violence”, a charge that carries a prison term of up to eight years. The charges mainly relate to Tatour’s poem on …

» Read on issuu.com Targeting the Arts Documenting incidents of censorship has never been enough. From the very beginning Freemuse has attempted to put censorship of music and arts into a larger context. In 2015 we introduced INSIGHT – a series of articles providing readers with analytical stories on censorship of …

The Israeli Minister of Culture, Miri Regev, wants to make allocation of funding of arts projects conditional upon the recipient’s loyalty to the Jewish state. At the end of January 2016, Miri Regev, Israel’s minister of culture and sport, proposed an amendment – dubbed the “loyalty in culture” bill – that would …

Israeli Culture Minister Miri Regev proposed a bill on 27 January 2016 that would tie arts funding only to projects and performances that are ‘loyal’ to Israel, reported Ynet News. The controversial ‘loyalty bill’ would aim to deny state funding to artists and institutions that, for example, incite racism, violence …

Officials in Israel’s education ministry banned Dorit Rabinyan’s ‘Gader Haya’ (Borderlife) book from being taught in schools because the plot involving a mixed romantic relationship between an Israeli and Palestinian is perceived as “threatening”, newspaper The Telegraph reported. Ministry of Education officials who banned the book on 30 December 2015 …

In June 2015, Israeli artists made a collective roar against their government over its arts funding policy which bans dissident artists. Like everywhere else in the world, the government of Israel can choose which artists to support with public funding. It can ban, expel and censor artists, according to its …

The conductor Daniel Barenboim’s efforts to lead the Berlin Staatskapelle at a concert in Tehran drew criticism from the Israeli culture minister, who called the performance “anti-Israel”, and a rebuff from Iranian officials, who said that they would block the concert because of Mr. Barenboim’s Israeli citizenship. A spokesman for …

Israel’s new Culture and Sports Minister Miri Regev sparked a furore when she threatened to defund a children theatre managed by an Arab Israeli if he refused to perform in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Israeli artists and leading cultural figures gathered Sunday 14 June 2015 to try and consolidate an …

The Palestinian artist Khaled Jarrar, who is known for his work about the West Bank barrier, has been prevented from travelling to New York for an opening of his exhibition, reported www.theartnewspaper.com Khaled Jarrar was stopped by the Israeli authorities at the crossing into Jordan, according to the website +972. …