Culture and Sports Minister Miri Regev came well prepared to her first meeting with representatives of Israeli cultural institutions on June 11. Regev, on a collision course with “left-wing artists” since her first day on the job, arrived accompanied by legal advisers and driven by a clear goal — to show this group of leftists who's the new boss.
A day before, Regev had been at the eye of the storm after threatening to withhold funds from the Almina Theater, established by Arab actor Norman Issa with his Jewish wife, for as long as he continued to refuse for political reasons to appear in the Jordan Valley. “The pressure being applied on me borders on blackmail,” Issa wrote on his Facebook page. “Don’t make me go against my conscience in order to remove this threat.”