Poets boycott festival over director's stance on sexual abuse

Some 90 poets have signed an open letter in the past few days in which they announce that they will not take part in the Poetry Festival in the northern city of Metula this summer as long as the literary editor of the Haaretz newspaper, Benny Ziffer, remains its artistic director.

The poets' protest was prompted by a controversial column Ziffer published over the weekend that many claim legitimizes sexual harassment by artists.

Ziffer wrote: "Artists from … and to Eyal Golan [Israeli singer] … must also experience intensely the things considered most base and primal in life, like coitus with young female fans. Without that, there would be no creation, as unfortunate as it might be for those young women, whose lives might be damaged. ... The demand that Eyal Golan demonstrate morality proves that Israeli society is lacking in culture. ... Artists must be given moral freedom that others are not."

At the beginning of the year, Ziffer was appointed artistic director of the Metula Poetry Festival, produced by Confederation House. On Monday, the poets published their open letter against Ziffer, saying that "this is not the first time that Ziffer has encouraged sexual harassment in his columns ... but these [statements] ... cross a line, making it acceptable to victimize women."

A number of veteran poets put their names to the missive, including Meir Wieseltier, who wrote a Facebook post saying: "The right of a great artist (or a small one, even a tiny one like Ziffer) to enjoy the pleasures of pedophilia and enjoy the rape of girls, experiences without which he would have difficulty laying the golden eggs of a great work, is exactly the same as the right of brigade commander to rape female soldiers, an experience without which he would have difficulty being a hero of Israel and a defender of the homeland. Both deserve the same sentence -- the same number of years in prison."

Ziffer told Israel Hayom on Monday that "if anyone thinks that if by taking the management of the Metula festival away from me I'll feel that I've been punished, they're wrong. I don't need publicity. I agreed to direct the festival as a gesture of good will toward poetry and literature. If someone is bothered by me, and if the festival thinks I harm it, I'm willing to step aside and let someone quieter than me take over.

"I realize that there are people who were offended by what I wrote, but I won't change my style of writing because I was appointed director of a festival."

Meanwhile, performer Ariel Bronz, who on Sunday created a storm at the Haaretz Cultural Conference when on stage he inserted an Israeli flag into his backside, was questioned under caution on Monday on suspicion of breaking the Flag Law. Bronz was released on bail, and the conference organizers were also called in to give evidence.

Culture and Sport Minister Miri Regev instructed her ministry to file a complaint against Bronz, whose performance, she said, was "a desecration of the flag for which soldiers and civilians are killed in Israel."

Bronz said in response: "It was a spontaneous act that took place as a result of the fury I felt because of the audience's barbaric outrage while I was trying to present a satirical stage piece that [I had been] invited to perform by the Cultural Conference, which -- like the rest of my artistic endeavors -- does not include contempt for symbols of the state or any other attack."

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