Healthy societies ought not be afraid of art, and ought not fear criticism. Yet Netanyahu and his coalition are constantly putting pressure on Israel’s artistic community to fall in line. For more than a decade, successive culture ministers under Netanyahu have sought to police artistic expression—blocking or defunding work that criticizes the government, challenges Israel’s West Bank occupation, or, since October 7, questions its conduct in Gaza. The ministers claim to be working in the public interest. In practice, they are actively working to sideline those who, through music, visual art, film, and literature, challenge Netanyahu’s policies, promote democratic values, or simply do not fall in step with the government. NIF and its partners are pushing back, carving out a more free cultural space by building new funding mechanisms and institutions to support artists of all kinds.
In one of the latest attacks on the arts, Minister of Culture Miki Zohar abruptly cancelled the ministry’s annual cultural prizes. Initially, Zohar claimed that budget cuts were to blame, but he later expressed that the cancellation was due to the fact that the prize committees were “clearly ignoring artists whose opinions are held by most of the country,” a common refrain from the populist Netanyahu government that seek to divide its supporters—those it sees as “the people”—from the seditious “others,” in this case, artists. The cancellations were a significant blow to artistic communities who, unlike most artists in North America, rely on government grants to sustain their work. The literary community is particularly impacted, as it does not receive other sources of state funding.
In response, NIF is launching the Israeli Prize for Literature, a prize which did not exist before but will now annually recognize outstanding literary works in seven different categories. The Berl Katznelson Foundation, an NIF grantee, has also stepped up, establishing two prizes for works of specifically political literature: one for a debut political piece by a published author and one for a work of children’s literature that promotes democracy.
NIF and its grantees have long awarded prizes as a way to platform and financially support changemakers. Every year, NIF’s Truth to Power Award celebrates the work of an activist who took significant personal risk in their advocacy. The annual Vivian Silver Award, named for a Canadian-Israeli peace activist murdered on October 7, honors the work of one Palestinian and one Jewish Israeli whose work advances justice and equality. The idea is to help activists, writers, and culture-makers find sources of income, recognition, and platforms so that they can continue to stand up for the values we believe in: democracy, equality, and justice.
These new awards cannot—and are not meant to—replace proper government funding for the arts. But they do reflect NIF’s sober assessment of Israel’s current political reality, and offer proof that we will never allow allow creative expression—political or otherwise—to be silenced.