MK Hanin Zoabi from the Arab Joint List party was heckled by protesters as she came to see a performance by Arab rapper Tamer Nafar at the Neve Yosef Community Center festival, which runs alongside the Haifa Film Festival this evening.
Protesters shouted "Go to Gaza!" "Go to Jenin!" at Zoabi.
The concert was secured by Israeli police who distanced the violent crowd from the radical anti-Zionist MK and escorted her safely into the concert hall.
Nafar's performance took place despite calls for Haifa Mayor Yona Yahav to cancel it. Many citizens and government officials believed that since the rapper's music denied Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state and since he discouraged enlisting in the IDF, his work should not receive public funding.
Culture Minister Miri Regev told Yahav that “It troubles me that a festival like the Haifa Film Festival, which has come to embody quality and close ties between nations and countries, chose to give the stage to an artist like Tamer Nafar, who takes every opportunity and every possible platform to come out against the idea of the State of Israel and its existence as a Jewish state.”
Regev called attention to the lyrics of of one of Nafar's songs, "Who is a terrorist?" which negates calling suicide bombers terroriss. It continues:. “Democracy? Why? It reminds me of the Nazis, You’ve raped the Arab soul, and it became pregnant, giving birth to a child called ‘terror attack,’ And then you call us terrorists.”