Israeli police will deploy later Tuesday to protect a festival from potential protesters after the culture minister called for an invitation to an Arab rapper to be withdrawn.
Two people were briefly detained but released on condition that they stay away from Israeli Arab rapper Tamer Nafar’s concert at the opening of a community theater festival in the northern city of Haifa, police said.
“The police presence will be strengthened to prevent friction and to preserve citizens’ safety and public security,” police spokeswoman Luba Samri said.
Culture Minister Miri Regev, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s rightwing Likud party, had demanded that Haifa mayor Yona Yahav withdraw the invitation to Nafar to perform, accusing him of incitement against the Jewish people.
But city officials decided to stick to the original running order for the municipality-sponsored event, which they said is meant to bring Jews and Arabs together in the mixed city.
Irene Abedi, a member of Haifa’s municipality, said they had written to the mayor to ask him to reject Regev’s request.
She said changing course would have gone against the city’s “multicultural” heritage and pandered to “rightwing extremist views that do not represent the majority in the state.”
Nafar confirmed he would still attend, telling reporters that “no one can silence my voice.”
He will perform on Tuesday alongside an Israeli rapper, local media reported.
Much of Nafar’s music relates to feeling oppressed by Israel.
Israeli media said Regev in particular objected to a song which included the lyrics: “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.”
Last month Regev walked out of a film award ceremony after Nafar and a Jewish performer read part of a poem by the late Palestinian national poet Mahmoud Darwish.

Source: Arab News