Desk journal · Opinion
A minister’s post is not a court. Stop writing as if it were.
Zohar named the Population Authority. Herzog called revocation irrelevant. The threat is real. The stamp is not.
On 14 September Culture Minister Miki Zohar wrote that the Venice win was horrifying, called the work treason, and said he would act immediately to revoke Abraham and Szor’s Israeli citizenship. The Guardian, Al Jazeera, and the Jerusalem Post all logged the post. That is the public record. It is also the sentence too many headlines treat as a completed act.
Citizenship revocation in Israel, as JTA and The Hindu both noted in the same week, runs through interior and judicial gates. A culture minister pointing at the Population Authority is still not an order. President Isaac Herzog, on Channel 12 as JTA quotes him, said stripping their citizenship was “completely irrelevant” and had “no chance.” He still called the film a shame. The presidency declined the nuclear option. The presidency did not defend the right to show the work.
On 16 September Reuters recorded Netanyahu promising two bills: one to strip citizenship from people who “defame” soldiers abroad, and one to multiply statutory defamation damages. He named NAZA. CPJ called that a move from rhetoric to a legal weapon. JTA wrote on 18 September that the bills had not become law. If they later do, this desk will date the statute. Until then, “citizenship stripped” in a headline is a wish, not the Population Authority’s stamp.
The street did not wait for a statute. France 24 described a mural in Ashdod: the directors’ faces, the English word TRAITORS, red targets. The PEN/IPI letter recorded protests at Szor’s family home and a chant of “death sentence for traitors.” That is why the letters talk about vigilante violence, not only about tweets. Intimidation can work before a bill passes. That is the point of the threat.
This desk’s position is dull on purpose. Abraham and Szor made a documentary. A film is not a treason docket. Quote the minister. Date the post. Do not launder a wish into a verdict. And do not let the argument about their passports replace the argument the film actually makes.