Times of Israel
Culture Minister Miki Zohar, of the ruling Likud party, said on Thursday that ‘Gaza belongs to Israel’, and that the roughly 2.3 million Palestinians in the enclave are ‘guests’ whom Israel is merely allowing to live there for now.
He made the remarks in an interview with the Kan public broadcaster, while explaining the reason why he is considering denying funds to the Israeli film industry, after the country’s most prestigious film prize, the Ophir Award, to ‘The Sea,’ a movie about a Palestinian boy from the West Bank who is denied an entry permit to visit the beach in Israel.
Pushed by radio host Chen Liberman to define exactly what it is about the movie that justified potentially defunding Israel’s film industry, Zohar suggested that it painted the IDF in a ‘bad light’ and made the Jewish state look like an ‘apartheid country that is killing Palestinians.‘
But when Liberman, in response, pointed out that the fictional IDF soldier did his job exactly as expected of him, stopping only the child without an entry permit while allowing the other children to enter Israel, Zohar pivoted.
‘Let me tell you about a large number of children, perfect and sweet, from Be’eri and Kfar Azza who won’t see the sea ever again,’ Zohar said, referring to Israeli children killed during the October 7 massacre.
‘Minister Miki Zohar, what you are telling me is that because of October 7, Israeli creators are forbidden from making films that are also about Palestinian children?’ Liberman inquired, to which Zohar only responded that he would not allow films that acted ‘against IDF soldiers’ to receive funding.
‘It’s a movie that depicts a certain reality, that’s the reality of the occupation,’ Liberman continued to push. ‘Maybe you have a problem with the occupation, but not with the movie, because the movie doesn’t lie in that regard.’
Zohar responded that Israel ‘is not occupying anything’ as it cannot be an occupier in its own lands.
‘Judea and Samaria are ours,’ he said, using the biblical term for the West Bank.
When asked specifically about the Gaza Strip, and whether the IDF’s continued deployment there was considered an occupation, he rejected this, too, saying: ‘Gaza is also ours. We’re just letting them stay there as guests until a certain point, but Gaza is ours.’
Zohar has expressed similar sentiments in the past.
He added that filmmakers who wish to receive government funds should ‘produce films that Israelis like to see. Not what Europeans like to see.’
Zohar eventually declared Liberman to be ‘hostile,’ and charged that it was because of journalists like her that the government is seeking to shut down the public broadcaster.
Since taking office three years ago, Zohar has repeatedly taken aim at productions and cultural endeavors that he has deemed distasteful. Shortly after taking office in January 2023, Zohar declared that the Israel Film Council would require filmmakers seeking government grants to sign a clause saying they would not produce content that depicted the Jewish state in a negative way.