While the Gaza war rages, Palestinian culture is suppressed in Israel

Comedian Ayman Nahas said he has been “holding back” since October 7 because he fears reprisals as an Arab artist in Israel while the country is waging war in the Gaza Strip.

He is one of many Arab artists in Israel or annexed East Jerusalem who report facing increasing hostility and harassment and fear threatened funding cuts or arrests.

“You never know where your place is, and that’s not the right atmosphere for a performance,” says Nahas, who is also artistic director of the Arabic-language Sard Theater in Haifa, northern Israel.

His theater, “like 99 percent of cultural institutions” in Israel, is dependent on state subsidies, he said.

But he fears funding could be cut, as happened to Al-Midan, another theater in the mixed Arab-Jewish city of Haifa, in 2015 after it performed a play inspired by the story of a prisoner detained by Israel for attacking troops.

A 25-year-old artist who wanted to use the pseudonym Elias to avoid negative reactions said he gave up acting and became a lifeguard because he was tired of always getting stereotypical roles.

Other Arab actors say they have not been able to find work in Israel since the war.

Elias has finally found a role in Berlin.

“I had to go into exile to practice my art,” he told AFP in a Tel Aviv cafe.

“I no longer wear my ‘Free Palestine’ bracelet and I’m careful about what I post on social media. I have friends who have had visits from the police.”

– Threats –

The nonprofit organization Mossawa has documented an increase in human rights violations against Israel’s Arab minority since October, including arrests, discrimination in the workplace and harassment in schools, as well as restrictions on the right to demonstrate.

Singer Dalal Abu Amneh, who is also a neuroscientist, was detained for 48 hours for sharing a social media post following the October 7 Hamas attack that said, “The only victor is God.”

Abu Amneh later said she was harassed in her hometown of Afula in northern Israel, where the majority Jewish population lives. Her lawyer said she received hundreds of “death threats.”

About 20 percent of Israel’s 9.5 million people are Arabs, and many of them identify as Palestinians.

They say they are often the target of discrimination by the Jewish majority, and these complaints have increased over the more than nine-month war between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip.

The attack on southern Israel on October 7 left 1,195 people dead, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on Israeli figures.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 38,443 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to figures from the Health Ministry of the Hamas-ruled territory.

– “Cultural Silence” –

Huda Imam, an advocate for Palestinian cultural sites in Jerusalem, said that “there has been a cultural silence since October 7.”

“There was a sense of shock, an inability to make a difference, out of fear and respect” for the victims of the war, she added.

“There was a Palestinian cultural life before the war, especially in East Jerusalem,” Imam said, referring to the sector that Israel captured in 1967 and later annexed in a move never recognized by most of the international community.

“Now people don’t go out anymore.”

And it is above all the exiles “who give Palestine a voice,” said Imam, referring to the rapper Saint Levant, who performed at the Coachella music festival in the USA in April, and the singer and flautist Nai Barghouti, who lives in Europe.

Palestinians still express themselves through their “living heritage, such as drinking coffee or dancing dabkeh,” a traditional dance, said artist Hani Amra.

Some artists wondered what relevance their work still had today.

“You turn on the television and see the war live. Reality is more powerful than any artistic work,” says Amer Khalil, director of Al-Hakawati in East Jerusalem, also known as the Palestinian National Theater.

The theater, founded in 1984, has been “closed more than 200 times in 40 years” and is once again in the crosshairs of the Israeli authorities, said Khalil.

“Running a theater is always difficult, but after October 7 everything became even more complicated,” he said, adding that Al-Hakawati was preparing a play about that day.

“It’s a game, like censorship, it comes and goes.”

we/cgo/tw/lb/ami/tym