Crackdown on Critics

"Satire," in the immortal phrase of George S. Kaufman, "is what closes on Saturday night." With only a change in Sabbath eve, that maxim about the low box-office appeal of satire applies as much in Israel as anywhere else. But the reason isn't always audience apathy. A satirical revue called Jesus, As Seen by His Friends--a fairly savage commentary on Israel's government establishment by Playwright Amos Kenan--lasted for only seven performances before it was closed down by Levi Guery, the official government censor. Guery explained that he found the revue "offensive to another religion."

Perhaps it was. Although Jesus is mentioned only in the title--presumably for shock value--the central character is "the man on a cross." But the real target of Kenan's satire was the quality of life in modern secular Israel and particularly its all-pervading militarism. That, the author claims, is the real reason why his revue was banned from the stage.

"The Israeli army has become a substitute for Jewish ideals," says Kenan. "No longer do Jews swear by their intellectuals, by their rebels or their revolutionaries, but by their army and their soldiers. They do not want to be martyrs. They want to be an efficient people." Thus, in one scene of the revue a housewife chortles: "Yesterday I noticed that my maid doesn't dust the table properly. So I called in the army. Now the army keeps things in order at home. It's a real delight to see how they rub, like well-oiled machines. My husband turned out to be inefficient too, so I called in the army...The synagogues are more efficient now. The Dead Sea is more efficient. The Wailing Wall is more efficient. Even happiness is more efficient. But what pleases me most is that the army has become God. Now God is more efficient too."

Protest. Kenan protested the censor's decision to Israel's highest court and lost. So far, his only support within the government has come from Deputy Premier Yigal Allon, who in his capacity as Minister of Education and Culture had underwritten $1,400 of the revue's production costs. Allon has moved that the censorship laws applying to the theater, which were written during the years of the British Mandate, be repealed. His proposal is on the agenda for Cabinet action, but government watchers predict that if any decision is taken, it will be to keep the laws. "If Kenan got $1,400 of public money for his play, then I have a right to censor it," says Knesset Member Mordecai Surkiss, who heads the parliamentary committee that deals with censorship.

The Kenan incident is the most recent in a series of government crackdowns on critics from within. In 1970 a satire called Queen of the Bathtub was pressured to close after 20 performances because it dealt brutally with Israeli losses during the "war of attrition" with Egypt. "Toilet humor," growled Defense Minister Moshe Dayan. Three months ago an English-language lampoon called Lillit, published by Hebrew University students, suddenly lost both circulation and government financial support. The magazine had carried the comic-strip adventures of a muscular "SuperGolda"; her principal adversary was a Tel Aviv intellectual driven berserk by police corruption, religious fanaticism, militarism, pollution, inflation and social inequality. Israel's state-run television network last January introduced a show called Not Everything Is Overlooked, which mixed music and political satire. After seeing the show, Golda Meir announced in stern Victorian tones: "I am not amused." The production ended after four telecasts.

Although most Israelis agree with their government's extreme sensitivity to criticism, some intellectuals feel that attacking their country for its shortcomings is not a threat to national security. Among areas they feel are ripe for criticism are the Middle East's no-war no-peace stalemate and the stern treatment of Arabs in Israel and the occupied territories. "We have to decide whether we want to make American Indians out of the Palestinians or live with them on an equal basis," says Kenan. "My attack is basically against the myths that we Zionists brought culture here, we cultivated the land, and therefore it belongs to us."

So far, the government has not formally responded to such attacks other than by trying to muffle them. Last year in a radio interview, however, Golda Meir did offer a bromidic standard of sorts. She observed when asked about censorship: "Nothing is moral or immoral. There is only beauty and ugliness. I have learned that the same thing can be beautiful and ugly, and I am in favor of beautiful things."

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