Israel, my Israel, is changing. And not for the better either. I am not referring to the ridiculous show put on by the IDF some time ago when they went into the Gaza Strip on an unidentified operation. First they botched it. Next they asked their own citizens to refrain from spreading images its enemy, Hamas, had already posted on the Net. After all, Israeli citizens are used to situations (as with nuclear weapons) in which they are not supposed to know what everyone else already does.
No. I am talking about a new law, popularly known as the “Loyalty Law,” now being debated in the Knesset. The person in charge is the minister of culture and sport, Ms. Miri (short for Miriam) Regev. The first time she drew public attention was in 2006 when, carrying the rank of brigadier general, she served as the IDF’s spokesperson and appeared on TV. Sitting right next to the chief of staff, General Dan Halutz, during what was later to be known as the Second Lebanon War, she kept whispering into his ear. A somewhat absurd situation, I must say.
I am not going to explain the law in detail. Suffice it to say that it gives Ms. Regev, as well as any minister who may hold the portfolio in the future, the authority to deny funding to any person or institution who writes or displays or puts on certain things. As by “undermining the state and its symbols.”
Personally I am not sure that culture and money make a good mix. I am, for example, not aware that Aeschylus and Sophocles and Euripides and Aristophanes received public money to write their plays. They were awarded prizes, of course, but that is a different matter. The same applies to countless others. Machiavelli wrote The Prince, Rembrandt painted his much beloved Saskia (and, later, drew his equally beloved Hendrickje), without asking the fisc for a single penny. What would have become of Rousseau, of Marx and Engels, of Darwin, of Zola, of van Gogh, of Picasso, and of so many others if they had to ask the powers that be for money to do their work?
Some of history’s greatest masterpieces, e.g. Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago, were created in direct contravention of censorship. That is why H. G. Wells, the British science fiction writer, once said that it is good for society to have some people with enough money to do exactly as they please. Unfortunately that is not the way the world works. Without commissions and patronage many, perhaps most, authors and artists would never had gotten along and countless masterpieces of every kind, come into the world. After all, each of us has his or her own tastes and neither can nor should be forced to pay for works that do not suit those tastes. But to distribute or withhold public money for political reasons—that is something that would have suited Hitler and Goebbels and Rosenberg just fine. And Stalin, and Mussolini, and Mao, and Saddam Hussein, and so many others who come to mind.
As Voltaire, who spent some time in prison because of his views, might have said, loyalty is the last refuge of the scoundrel. SS commander Heinrich Himmler put it more forcefully still: Unsere Ehre heisst Treue, our honor is named loyalty. It was loyalty, among other things, that led to some of the worst crimes and atrocities of all time to be committed.
All this reminds me of a story I once heard. An old man in Sodom started walking around carrying a placard, “repent, the end of the world is near!” A few weeks later a little boy approached him. “Grandpa,” he said, “why go on? You can see for yourself that no one is listening.” Answered the old man: “When I started protesting, I hoped to convince them. Now, all I want to do is prevent them from convincing me.”
After all, at seventy-two I have nothing to lose but my mind.