Kotler, a worthy and principled person, has been marked as a public enemy by his colleagues no less that by the right, just like Yair Garbuz before him, and this huge distraction has succeeded again. That’s the way it is when the remnants of the left apologize and the center is no more than the right in disguise.

What’s at stake now is democracy, no less. There are no small words to describe the risk and there is no place for underestimating it. Whoever cancels funding to cultural institutions because of their political views is doing so because this is the most accessible weapon at the moment. But it’s liable to affect legislation as well. And when there’s a war on, to say “beasts” is not the issue and not the end of the world. The end of the world is the process being led by a power-crazed Miri Zhdanov to the jubilant cheers of the crowd, with the support of the government and the kowtowing center-left.

Regev is using boycotts and sanctions in a country that yells “gevalt!” about those who dare to boycott it from the outside, and is thus adding fuel to the fire, since a state that censors, just like one that subjugates, deserves a cultural boycott by the world.

Whoever is now “examining the funding sources” of Haifa’s Al-Midan Theater, which had been staging “A Parallel Time,” will do the same thing tomorrow to Haaretz. Whoever threatens a film festival because of a film to be screened there will soon force that festival to screen only films the government prefers. Whoever brings Norman Issa, who refused to perform over the Green Line, to his knees, will soon do the same to Jewish actors as well. Whoever says it’s forbidden to criticize the IDF is saying Israel is a censorship state.