Institutions bend before October voting begins

The Central Elections Committee has voted to block Arab political factions and candidates from the upcoming national ballot. That broad ban now heads to the Supreme Court, with the legal balance of the next Knesset hanging on the outcome.

I'm Maya.

And I'm Amos. This is another episode of Sixty One, a Daily Lion production, where we ask what kind of country Israel is supposed to be, one week at a time. Today we are looking at the fractured opposition's struggle to unseat Likud, the presidential pardon granted to Elor Azaria, Benjamin Netanyahu's combative appearance at the United Nations, the move to disqualify Arab slates from the ballot, and the ultra-Orthodox standoff over military draft exemptions. And then we go deep on Miki Zohar's overhaul of state cinema funding.

We are starting with the political map in Israel today. The opposition is trying to build a coalition to replace the current government, and Gadi Eisenkot is struggling against the campaign framing from Likud. But neither side is actually capturing the public. Both major Israeli political parties each poll at barely twenty percent of voters.

Yeah, those in the anti-Netanyahu camp see a bloc that is actively sabotaging its own chances. They note that when Bennett led the campaign, the opposition held sixty to sixty-one projected seats. But with Eisenkot standing as its primary leader, that advantage has evaporated. The factions can't agree on a unified ticket. Benny Gantz insists he needs to lead the path. And Bennett suggests the party heads can simply sit in a room and reach an agreement after the votes are counted. Polling estimates show Likud falling to between eighteen and twenty-four seats from the thirty-two it won in November twenty twenty-two.

How is the liberal bloc handling that drop in seats?

Campaigners argue instead of capitalizing on this, they're trying to win swing voters with policy points. They note a quarter of an entire draft cohort isn't enlisted into military service because of political alliances with the ultra-Orthodox. They point to Bill Clinton's nineteen ninety-two victory, driven by the slogan about the economy, arguing elections are won by offering an emotionally inspiring vision grounded in shared identity, not by reciting statistics. For the anti-Netanyahu camp, this failure to forge a genuine alliance leaves the electorate trapped in a polarized stalemate. An N twelve poll measured a potential joint ticket of Gilad Erdan's Unity party and Blue and White at two point six percent, falling short of the three point two five percent electoral threshold. Erdan ultimately withdrew, noting voters remain fundamentally focused on who will be prime minister rather than backing a generic unity alternative.

Across the aisle, Likud and right-wing campaigners look at that polling and see an opposition led by out-of-touch establishment figures who'd endanger the country. They argue since every poll shows the opposition falling short of a sixty-one-seat majority even with a yes vote from Mansour Abbas, Eisenkot would have to depend entirely on anti-Zionist Arab factions. Challenged on this in internal meetings, Eisenkot asked his colleagues what alternative they have. Beyond coalition math, the right attacks his personal fitness to represent Israel. Campaigners contrast his speaking style with the prime minister's polished delivery, circulating clips of Donald Trump remarking he can't understand a word Eisenkot says. Right-wing media figures dismiss the former chief of staff as someone who doesn't read books, lacks education, and understands nothing of military literature, joking he perhaps read Harry Potter.

What do they say about how those figures handle power?

The conservative magazine Mida argues these opposition figures have proven records of weakening the military and undermining democratic norms when they hold power. They point out the Gideon multi-year plan eliminated about two thousand five hundred permanent military positions and dismissed approximately one hundred thousand reserve soldiers. By July twenty twenty-four, defense leadership warned of an acute manpower deficit requiring ten thousand additional troops. The argument extends to their democratic credentials. They note Yair Golan declared Channel fourteen a propaganda organ and promised when his camp comes to power, they'll shut it down.

So the electorate is left waiting for a political configuration that matches its mood. The current coalition holds its ground not through surging popularity, but because the forces trying to replace it can't agree on a single path forward. Until the opposition resolves its internal hierarchy, the parliamentary math remains frozen.

President Isaac Herzog has expunged the manslaughter record of Elor Azaria. A decade ago, the former soldier was convicted for shooting an incapacitated Palestinian attacker in Hebron. And the clemency was granted at the formal request of the defense minister, overriding reported objections from the military's senior command.

The pardon arrives just as the country heads toward an election. It revives one of the defining political fractures of the last ten years. I mean, the original trial split the Israeli public between those demanding strict adherence to military rules of engagement and those insisting a soldier in uniform must be backed by the state. Now, the president's signature has brought that collision straight back to the surface.

For the political right and the ministers who backed the clemency, this is about letting a loyal soldier finally rebuild his civilian life. The argument is that he fulfilled his legal debt to the state years ago. He served nine months of an eighteen-month sentence before his release in two thousand and eighteen.

How long does a conviction like that last?

Without the president's intervention, it would've remained on his record until two thousand and thirty-two, permanently complicating the now thirty-year-old's future. The defense minister called the decision to wipe the slate clean, and the phrase he uses is, right, humane and fitting. And the broader case here is that the defense establishment must stand behind the people it sends to the front lines. Defense Minister Yisrael Katz submitted the formal request for clemency in July.

But the military establishment and its institutional defenders look at the exact same pardon and see a catastrophic degradation of the army's ethical code. They point back to March twenty-fourth, two thousand and sixteen, when the soldier aimed his rifle at Abdel Fattah al-Sharif and pulled the trigger. The captive was lying on the ground when he fired from a few meters away. The military's chief of staff at the time stated clearly that the action wasn't the army, not its values, and not its culture.

How do they view the decision to clear his record?

Clearing the record of an offender who never expressed remorse is viewed as subverting military justice entirely. Because the army had already shown leniency when the chief of staff reduced the initial prison sentence to fourteen months. Now, the president's action is described, in their words, as a poisoned pardon that damages the country's moral standing during a period of intense violence. And the ultimate fear is that surrendering to this kind of populist pressure teaches commanders that enforcing the rules will only bring personal ruin. For a decade, the political system has steadily eroded the military's ability to investigate itself. The institutional memory of chanting, the chant was, Gadi Gadi beware, Rabin seeks a friend, at the army chief remains a stark warning of what happens to officers who demand accountability.

Ask Palestinian and human rights advocates, and the story is about a state that has abandoned any pretense of accountability. They argue the pardon merely formalizes a system that shields security forces from legal consequences when they kill Palestinians. Between two thousand and sixteen and two thousand and twenty-four, over two thousand four hundred complaints were filed against soldiers. Indictments were opened in only twenty-two point seven percent of those cases.

What does the clemency reflect in that view?

It reflects a society that's entirely normalized vigilantism and state-sanctioned violence. The president deliberately waited until twenty minutes before the start of Yom Kippur to announce the decision, calculating that the timing would suppress media debate. And the pardon is seen as part of a much wider embrace of lethal force. Since October two thousand and twenty-three, human rights monitors have recorded one thousand and eighty-seven Palestinians killed in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. At the same time, the national security minister has overseen the issuance of more than a quarter of a million private firearm licenses, explicitly encouraging civilians to carry their weapons, and the phrase he uses is, even to the synagogues.

The erasure of this single record leaves the country staring at a profound unresolved tension. Because what remains to be seen is whether a military drafted from the public can sustain its own strict ethical boundaries, or if the civilian political system will ultimately dictate how force is governed on the ground.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traveled to New York to address the United Nations General Assembly. He spent roughly six hours on the ground. And the Israeli delegation he brought with him cheered and applauded loudly throughout the event. With Israelis heading to the polls on October twenty-seventh, the prime minister's facing another tough reelection fight.

He's expected to tout Israel's military successes during the appearance. Delivering his fifteenth address to the General Assembly, he framed the visit as a necessary mission. He said he was there to tell the truth about our heroic soldiers. But he also used the trip to directly challenge foreign detractors. He told the mayor of New York City that he came, in his words, to tell the truth about you.

Who is he trying to reach?

Former Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren suggests he might be thinking that attacking Mamdani and the Iranians could win over wavering voters. He's still the preferred candidate for more than a third of the electorate. He dominates among voters who identify with the center-right. So the speech was carefully built to provide viral clips for the Likud party's next month of campaigning. The messaging frames the election as a stark binary choice. He held up a traffic sign at a rally to declare that voters can only turn left or right. In twenty twenty-four, he held up placards labeled the blessing and the curse. And he closed with the command from Deuteronomy to be strong and of good courage.

Right, but the opposition camp looks at the exact same trip and sees an empty spectacle. One masking severe political vulnerability. Those in the center note that the assembly has seen this speech seventeen or eighteen times before. And that it'll be delivered to an almost empty auditorium. The foreign press correctly identified a leader who's, as they put it, isolated, confrontational and fighting for his political future. Former Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren argues that the prime minister isn't really speaking to the United Nations. He's speaking to the Israeli public. To obscure the deep diplomatic distancing, the delegation relied on entourage theatrics. The prime minister's military secretary, a major general in uniform, acted as a prop who stood and applauded for half an hour.

What's driving that distancing?

Israel has faced deepening diplomatic isolation. The prime minister's unable to travel to many countries because of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant issued against him in twenty twenty-four. A lack of any encounter with Donald Trump just a month before an Israeli election signals an intentional distancing. And that harms the prime minister's electoral standing.

The question now is whether projecting defiance on the global stage still translates to votes at home. The answer depends on whether the electorate sees a leader standing alone to protect them. Or a politician using the state's most vital alliances as props for his own survival.

The Central Elections Committee has just voted to bar Arab political parties and several key candidates from running in the upcoming national election. The committee is made up of representatives from the parties in the Knesset. And it moved to disqualify the Joint List, Ra'am, and individual politicians including Sami Abu Shehadeh.

Yeah, these disqualifications are a recurring pre-election gesture. In the previous cycle in two thousand and twenty-two, the Supreme Court overturned the committee's decision to disqualify Balad. But the focus this time is heavily on him. Because in February two thousand and twenty-two he posted photos praising three members of a Nablus cell who were killed following shooting attacks on Israeli troops.

The conservative magazine Mida argues that the case for the bans starts with the immediate aftermath of the Hamas assault. On October eighth, two thousand and twenty-three, exactly twenty-four hours after the massacres began, he published an article analyzing the invasion. He described the breach as, in his words, an important historic event from a military, political and strategic perspective. The text warned that if a besieged territory like Gaza could execute such an operation, others could do it more effectively. For the right, this is explicit support for armed struggle. And the same standard applies to Ofer Cassif. He faced two statutory grounds for disqualification before the committee voted nineteen to five to bar him.

What are the grounds against him?

He signed a petition accusing Israel of starving and erasing the population of the strip, supporting international proceedings. The argument is that he acts as the finishing diplomatic leg of Yahya Sinwar's strategy, providing the international pressure the group relies on to tie the army's hands. Demanding global bodies force the military to stop fighting constitutes active material support for the enemy. Proponents argue the state must also defend its foundational character by disqualifying factions that reject its sovereignty. That drove the eighteen to five vote to bar the party. They point to a history of Arab lawmakers undermining security. A founder of the other group was investigated for severe security offenses in two thousand and seven before fleeing the country. Another former lawmaker served two years in prison after smuggling twelve mobile phones to security prisoners.

Sir Mick Davis and Mike Prashker, founders of The London Initiative, argue the move's a partisan decision. They warn the committee, which has twenty-three members from the parties in the Knesset, is attacking the political organization and representation of Arab citizens. Both factions were barred by majorities of eighteen or nineteen to five. Arab leaders call the move an attempt to steal the election. They warn it creates conditional political citizenship where equality at the ballot box is only formal. And they point to a glaring double standard in how the committee treats political extremes. While Arab factions are routinely banned, petitions to disqualify far-right Jewish figures like Baruch Marzel were rejected in two thousand and three and two thousand and fifteen.

Did they end up running?

The Supreme Court ultimately had to step in to bar three far-right Jewish candidates in two thousand and nineteen. In this cycle, the attorney general's office warned that one right-wing party was sitting very close to the prohibited zone of incitement. Yet it was cleared to run while Arab lists were purged. In this view, advocating for a state of all its citizens is a legitimate political stance that doesn't violate election law. A representative for the attorney general noted that while some remarks by Arab lawmakers are outrageous, they don't amount to actual support for armed struggle. The candidate himself has stated that he condemns the October seventh attack and would never have published his article had he known the true scale of the atrocities that morning.

A third perspective looks at the mechanics of the committee itself and sees pure electoral theater. Section Seven A of the Basic Law governs these disqualifications based on three specific criteria. But the votes are driven by ideological posturing rather than legal judgment. Tani Frank of the Shalom Hartman Institute argues the process is simply a good show put on for the voters. It creates a win-win trap for the right. Because if the judges uphold the bans, the right wins, and if the court overturns them, politicians blame an interventionist judiciary. The expectation is that the Supreme Court will once again overturn the disqualifications.

How did the committee vote on him?

The vote to disqualify him passed by a majority of thirty-one to four, and crucially included the committee's chair, Supreme Court Justice Noam Sohlberg. He stated he didn't find a reasonable answer to the charges against the candidate. The attorney general has also confirmed there's a solid evidentiary basis for that specific disqualification. The institute suggests that this creates an unexpected dynamic for the broader fight over Israeli democracy. If the Supreme Court strikes down the sweeping bans on the Arab parties but upholds the exclusion of one specific politician, it could actually strengthen the judiciary.

Yeah, the final decision now moves to the Supreme Court. They have to navigate the space between protecting democratic representation and enforcing the boundaries of the law. The ruling will determine not just the shape of the upcoming ballot, but the ongoing balance of power between the country's elected politicians and its highest court.

The deadline to replace the military conscription law has triggered a political crisis over the status of ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students. And this national standoff arrives alongside new municipal disclosures out of Bnei Brak. Those detail entrenched patronage systems and massive deficits in the country's most prominent Haredi city.

For the Lithuanian rabbinic leadership, protecting full-time yeshiva study is an existential necessity. It supersedes any political alliance. There are currently some sixty-six thousand married scholars and yeshiva students holding active military deferrals. Without a new law, roughly ninety thousand young Haredi men are now legally classified as draft evaders. So the supreme rabbinic authority has formally declared an end to their alignment with the right-wing bloc. They state they no longer feel like partners with the prime minister. And that maneuvering is driven entirely by the need to shield Torah institutions, not by any ideological attachment to the state.

How do they view the state itself?

The ninety-six-year-old leader of the Lithuanian stream views Zionism with deep revulsion, seeing the secularization of immigrants in the state's early years as an unhealed wound. Government engagement is treated as a purely pragmatic necessity. Representatives enter the Knesset solely to secure budgets and defend religious life. Any involvement with Zionist institutions beyond this strict lobbying mandate is forbidden. From this vantage point, the push for universal conscription is a disguised campaign to dismantle Haredi society. They point to proposals granting exemptions to only three percent of yeshiva students while drafting the rest, alongside half a billion dollars invested annually in organizations trying to integrate the community. The leadership argues the military campaigns themselves are fought merely for the state's honor rather than true salvation.

From the perspective of the mainstream civic public, the absolute refusal to share the defense burden is an indefensible abandonment of the rest of the country. The military states it urgently needs ten thousand soldiers to sustain a prolonged, multi-front war. Families are buckling under the strain of repeated deployments, with some seeing three sons and a son-in-law fighting in Gaza for nearly five months. One wounded reservist asked what he needed to do and what was in his control. And they reject the premise that religious devotion requires draft evasion, arguing Jewish halakhic tradition actually demands active military participation.

Is there a historical precedent for that?

The historical record shows earlier generations of ultra-Orthodox political figures fought in the War of Independence and were deeply proud of their military service. For those in the center, national survival requires a synthesis of spiritual faith and physical defense. The anger is compounded by how Haredi politicians use coalition leverage to extract state resources without public accountability. Haredi and Arab citizens now make up more than thirty percent of the population, yet the political model remains focused on sectarian spoils. In Bnei Brak, municipal jobs are carved up in rotation between Hasidic and Lithuanian factions rather than awarded on merit. Politicians treat the city like a prize to be plundered for insiders. That patronage system costs the public heavily, including nearly forty million shekels a year spent employing hundreds of workers past retirement age.

The collision between a community demanding total autonomy and a state desperate for manpower is testing the limits of the Israeli civic contract. The question now is whether a political system built on sectarian alliances can survive a wartime public that is no longer willing to underwrite its own fragmentation.

Now, our deep dive: the culture ministry's campaign to remake Israeli film subsidies.

By the early twenty-twenties, the state cinema budget had grown to roughly one hundred and thirty million shekels. The architecture holding that money was built a quarter of a century ago. That's when the nineteen ninety-nine Cinema Law established an annual budget that would be distributed through a series of independent film funds. The system relies on independent lectors who evaluate script submissions based on artistic merit rather than political expediency. That keeps the government at an arm's length from the creative process. But that structure contained a fatal flaw. The funds themselves are independent. But the Ministry of Culture sets the complex scoring system, known as the support tests, that determines exactly how the massive financial pie's divided among them.

Right, and the minister moved on that flaw. In early twenty twenty-five, Culture Minister Miki Zohar pushed through a massive reform of those support tests. Zohar argued that the reform ensures taxpayer money's directed toward works of art that speak to the Israeli audience. He contrasted that with an industry that builds its career on slandering Israel on the global stage. He noted that the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land wasn't funded by Israeli film funds. That justified his decision to focus ministry funding on movies likely to be mainstream hits rather than artistic films or documentaries.

And the new regulations also eliminate fund specializations. That means any fund can now choose to invest in any category of film rather than being restricted to specific formats like features or shorts. Fixed specializations previously guaranteed the production of documentaries and short films. So allowing funds to choose which films to support leaves funding for those specific formats no longer guaranteed. At the same time, the share of the cinema budget designated for regional funds was increased from thirteen and a half percent to twenty-one and a half percent.

Yeah, the changes go straight to the evaluation process too. The reform also removed the requirement for state-supported film funds to employ government script evaluators. That allows them to select professional reviewers independently. Those evaluators were originally intended to increase transparency and social diversity among screenwriters. The legislation claimed, however, that the process had failed to achieve its goals. It argued the process instead brought unnecessary bureaucracy and excess costs that sometimes harmed the level of professionalism. Zohar stated that the move reduces unnecessary government intervention and lets the public determine which films are financed and seen.

But the ministry soon went beyond structural changes. By the end of the year, they moved to effectively freezing the remaining ninety million shekels of the historical budget. On December twenty-second, twenty twenty-five, Zohar announced the establishment of a professional committee. That body will examine the continuation of state funding for Israeli cinema and its current financing model. The committee was given forty-five days from its formation to submit its conclusions and recommendations to the minister. It's explicitly tasked with examining whether there's justification for continued state support for cinema. It'll also look at whether alternatives should be pursued, including independent economic activity without government backing.

And while the committee deliberates, the ministry's withholding the money that keeps the industry running. The Ministry of Culture and Sports announced the cancellation of the twenty twenty-six budgets for the directors', actors', and editors' guilds. At the same time, the minister instructed the ministry to issue only a semi-annual call for support requests. That call's strictly capped at forty million shekels. Screenwriter and playwright Yoav Shoten-Goshen announced he's boycotting the minister's film awards ceremony. He stated he'll donate any prize money he might receive to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.

That bureaucratic chokehold extends beyond the film funds to the physical spaces where movies are shown. In December twenty twenty-four, the Tel Aviv Cinematheque hosted the Solidarity Festival, a human rights film festival. Following the event, Zohar asked the finance minister to determine if the Cinematheque violated funding laws. He wanted to know if they broke the rules by screening films that disparage soldiers of the Israel Defense Force and oppose the state. The right-wing organization B'tsalmo often provides the government with complaints about events it believes defame the army. They filed the complaints that triggered Zohar's action against the festival.

Zohar maintained that screening such films in an institution funded by the government is problematic. He said it deviates from legitimate freedom of expression. In pursuing the matter, the minister disregarded advice from his own ministry's legal adviser. That adviser had opposed the idea of stopping funding to the institution in retaliation for the festival's content. Those on the left argue that films in Israel rely primarily on the government rather than private investors. Because of that, threats over critical topics clearly lead people to exercise self-censorship even if they don't admit it.

The government's also found other ways to police public exhibition spaces. Three months before the threat against the Tel Aviv Cinematheque, the government started deploying a long-dormant nineteen twenty-seven British Mandate regulation. Under that rule, films screened at cinematheques need to be greenlighted by a cinema board within the culture ministry. That board previously focused primarily on setting viewer age ratings. Now, the board's requiring cinematheque directors to clear all films with it. That enables the government to delay, cancel, or discourage the screening of specific movies.

The drama follows a twelve-year-old Palestinian boy whose travel permit is rejected at a military checkpoint. That prompts him to sneak into Israel alone to see the Mediterranean for the first time. His undocumented father is working as an unskilled laborer. And he risks arrest and prison in Tel Aviv to find his missing son. The production was made possible by a two million shekel grant from the independent Israel Film Fund. They were operating under the exact arm's-length mechanisms the government's now dismantling.

Yeah, and in September of twenty twenty-five, the film swept the thirty-sixth Ophir Awards. It took home five prizes including Best Picture. That victory carried immediate international weight. Because the winner of the Israeli Academy's top prize automatically becomes the country's official submission for the Academy Awards. The prospect of an Arabic-language film about the military administration representing Israel on the global stage infuriated the political right. The culture minister, Miki Zohar, denounced the ceremony as a disgraceful event that was spitting in the face of soldiers. He accused the film of portraying the state in a negative light.

So Zohar retaliated by announcing the total withdrawal of government financial support for the Ophir Awards starting in twenty twenty-six. But the minister didn't simply want to defund the existing establishment. He wanted to replace it with one he could control. To supplant the Ophirs, Zohar established the rival Israeli State Film Awards. He scheduled the new government-sponsored ceremony for the end of December twenty twenty-five at the Jerusalem International Convention Center.

Look, to ensure the industry participated, the government leveraged the public budget to offer a massive one million shekel prize pool. They were handing out one hundred thousand shekels across ten different categories. The winners would be selected by a panel of anonymous judges appointed secretly by the state. The strategy relied on the assumption that an industry starved of its standard funding would have no choice but to accept the state's money. And the ideological compliance that came with it.

The industry rebelled instead. Four nominees withdrew from the state awards. The withdrawal that was particularly shocking to the political establishment came from the director Erez Tadmor. Tadmor was nominated for Matchmaking Two. That's a highly successful commercial comedy aimed at traditional audiences. He was exactly the kind of filmmaker the new ticket-sales criteria were designed to reward. Yet he walked away from the prize. He stated that awards must reflect a clean and unifying artistic celebration rather than political coercion.

Right, Tadmor wasn't alone in rejecting the alternative ceremony. Three other nominees also withdrew. The lead actress of Matchmaking Two, Irit Kaplan, also withdrew her name from the Best Actress category. That left the state awards visibly depleted. The veteran editor Einat Glaser-Zarhin joined the boycott as well. She wrote that the state event was creating conflict and pain instead of pride in their work. The technical crews followed suit. They refused to lend their professional credibility to the event. The cinematographer Amit Yasur withdrew his nomination. He stated that the Ophir awards represent a fair and democratic choice, unlike a committee appointed by politicians.

That withdrawal of nominees delegitimized specific awards. The nominees who walked away also made a point of redirecting whatever funds the state might try to force upon them. Tadmor pledged that if he won the screenwriting prize, he'd donate the prize money directly to the Ophir Awards.

The Jerusalem Post notes that Zohar reacted to the artists' withdrawals by lashing out at the creators who refused to participate. The minister accused extreme-left bullies of running an intense campaign of harassment and threatening the nominees into withdrawing. He was framing the artists' independent decisions as a coordinated political attack. He declared that the public had no interest in funding the film industry. And he promised to advance legislation that would cancel the cinema funding entirely. Zohar argued that citizens were tired of paying out of their own pockets to a handful of extremists who harm soldiers.

I mean, according to Film Industry Watch, the decision to defund the Ophir Awards deepened a crisis that ties artistic recognition directly to political loyalty. The government was intentionally creating chaos. They were effectively forcing creators to choose between complying with state narratives or ceasing to work entirely. The standoff over the awards ceremony demonstrated that the bureaucratic chokehold wasn't just about saving money. It was about neutralizing the ideological conversation in Israel and isolating the industry from the rest of the world.

That bureaucratic chokehold escalated into a matter of state security in September twenty twenty-six. That's when a documentary called Naza premiered at the Venice Film Festival. An Israeli-Palestinian collective directed the film. The documentary features anonymous interviews with twenty-four Israeli intelligence officers and soldiers. Through those interviews, the film alleges that the military utilized an artificial intelligence system to identify targets. And it claims the army knowingly struck residential buildings and caused massive civilian casualties in Gaza.

The response in Venice was overwhelming. The film received a special jury prize and a standing ovation that lasted twenty-four and a half minutes. But back in Israel, the reaction bypassed the Culture Ministry's funding levers entirely. It went straight to the military high command. The military chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, publicly condemned the documentary. He called it a blood libel and a deliberate distortion of reality that leveled false accusations against the army's soldiers. The military issued a categorical denial of the film's claims. They stated that human beings authorize all strikes, and that anticipated civilian harm is always weighed against military advantage to ensure proportionality.

Yeah, Zamir didn't stop at a public condemnation. Instead he ordered the military advocate general to investigate whether classified materials had been leaked during the production of the film. The chief of staff also requested that the military advance possible legal action against the people involved in making it. Then the Culture Minister, Miki Zohar, pushed the government's posture toward contentious art from administrative defunding to potential criminal and security prosecution. On September thirteenth, Zohar announced his intention to turn to the Interior Ministry to strip the filmmakers of their Israeli citizenship. He declared that their actions constituted treason and a betrayal of the state during wartime.

Zohar argued that freedom of expression doesn't grant anyone a license to betray their country. So he asked the Shin Bet to investigate exactly how the filmmakers had obtained their sources. The campaign to criminalize the directors quickly gained the backing of the prime minister. Benjamin Netanyahu announced that he'd advance legislation allowing the state to revoke the citizenship of anyone who defames Israeli soldiers or the state itself abroad. Netanyahu also pushed a separate bill designed to target those responsible financially. He proposed increasing the statutory damages for defamation in cases involving the military by twenty times, up to one million shekels.

That attempt to turn a cinematic production into a treason inquiry triggered immediate institutional panic. The Israel Film Council convened an emergency meeting to reevaluate how international film festivals factor into the criteria for state subsidies. They ended up recommending a new funding initiative specifically for works that highlight the heroism of soldiers. Meanwhile, the rhetoric from the government spilled over into the public sphere. The freed hostage Eliya Cohen publicly called on Israelis to make the filmmakers feel unwelcome. He suggested people should spit on them in the street. And another former captive labeled them traitors who belonged in prison.

Right, the push to strip the directors of their citizenship crossed a legal line that even the country's figurehead head of state felt compelled to address. President Isaac Herzog condemned the documentary. He called it a disgrace that tarnished the country's name. But he dismissed the idea of revoking the filmmakers' citizenship as completely irrelevant and having no chance of actually happening. Under current Israeli law, citizenship can only be revoked in narrowly defined cases of terrorism or serious espionage. There's no precedent for applying that mechanism to a work of art.

The move pushed the country's long-simmering culture war into uncharted legal and political territory. The Forward notes that the culture minister explicitly invoked his own cinema funding reforms during the uproar. He argued that Israeli citizens shouldn't have to pay for work that harms the army. The constant attacks by authorities signaled to creators that probing alleged army violations carried severe professional risks.

And the domestic film industry recognized the severity of the threat and rallied behind the targeted directors. The Algemeiner reports that over fifteen hundred Israeli film professionals signed a petition expressing solidarity with Abraham and Szor, defending their right to document the war. Forty-three human rights and peace organizations also mobilized. They urged the authorities to avoid prosecuting the filmmakers or hunting down their anonymous sources. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel warned that using the power of the state to threaten creators violates fundamental press freedoms.

That national security threat lands on an industry that's already structurally incapable of surviving on domestic money alone. The state film funds here typically only cover between forty and sixty percent of a feature film's total budget. To secure the rest of the money, Israeli producers rely heavily on European co-production treaties. And those treaties have historically provided the essential capital needed to get these projects onto the screen.

Yeah, those European broadcasters operate under strict freedom of expression mandates. If an Israeli producer accepts money under the new ideological criteria or signs a loyalty clause to satisfy the culture ministry, they impose those restrictions on the entire production. Unwilling to concede to restricted freedom of expression dictated by the Israeli government, the European partners pull their funding. That leaves the filmmakers with a stark choice between complying with state narratives or ceasing to work entirely.

That financial trap has brought domestic production to a standstill. As of late September twenty twenty-six, the industry's historical one hundred and thirty million shekel budget remains effectively frozen pending the government's professional committee review. And the demand for ideological purity is now spilling into the Diaspora. It's isolating Israeli culture abroad and cutting the country off from the global cinematic community.

Exactly. In February twenty twenty-six, the Israeli Consulate General to the Southeastern United States abruptly pulled its partnership and financial support from the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival. The consulate had discovered that a festival juror posted social media content critical of the war in Gaza. And the government deemed that content antisemitic and anti-Israel. One juror compared the withdrawal of funds to the threat to defund the Ophir Awards over a film about a Palestinian boy in the West Bank.

But the festival leadership refused to dismiss the juror. They released a statement citing a commitment to creating spaces where people with different opinions can come together and engage in a pluralistic dialogue. Consul General Eitan Weiss defended the decision to cut ties. He stated that the consulate maintains a zero-tolerance policy against antizionism, which he defined as the right of self-determination of the Jewish people. The consulate argued it couldn't normalize individuals who take an active role in trying to undermine the legitimacy of the Jewish state.

The Artistic Freedom Initiative sees an identical authoritarian toolkit used by right-wing populist governments in Eastern Europe. Kuba Szreder notes that the Law and Justice party took over major museums and contemporary art centers by installing loyal directors.

In Poland, the government weaponized the Ministry of Culture to overhaul the country's independent arts institutions and contemporary art centers. Rather than passing explicit bans that would trigger immediate European Union sanctions, the Polish ministry systematically replaced independent directors with party loyalists.

The Polish culture minister executed this political takeover entirely within his legal statutory powers. He took advantage of centralized appointment structures to push a conservative agenda without breaking any laws. Right-wing politicians there justified the institutional interventions by claiming they were simply stripping away the advantages held by liberal elites who were afraid of losing their grip on the culture.

And the same pattern played out in Hungary. The Fidesz government established the Hungarian Academy of Art as a conservative oversight body for arts and culture. The Hungarian government systematically stacked the country's major arts and cultural institutions with party loyalists.

For those on the left watching the Israeli film industry freeze, the parallel is exact. They argue that centralized state funding structures enable a ministry to unilaterally control the artistic landscape and determine how works are received. Instead of supporting independent projects through technocratic grants, authoritarian cultural policies invest heavily in allied cultural groups. They aim to provide cultural backing for their own political agenda.

A bureaucratic shift in funding criteria has transformed into an active fight over who gets to speak and define the boundaries of citizenship.

And as international backing retreats, drying up essential funds, the government ensures only stories that validate the prevailing political order make it to the screen.

That's the count this week. Sixty One is a Daily Lion production. Don't forget to tune in to the other Daily Lion shows: Crosswinds, All Fronts, and Tribe & State. See you next Monday.