The Minister of Culture and Sport in Israel has threatened to cut funding for the country's national film awards after The Sea, a story about a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, won its top award. Image: Miki Zohar shared via X.
(The Post News) – The Minister of Culture and Sport in Israel, Miki Zohar, has threatened to cut funding for the country’s national film awards after The Sea, a story about a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, won its top award.
The Sea Film Defames IDF Soldiers
In a statement on X, Miki Zohar said the citizens of Israel will not pay out of their pockets for a disgraceful ceremony that spits on the heroic IDF soldiers. After the pro-Palestinian film The Sea, which defames the country’s heroic soldiers while they fight to protect it, won the award for best film at the shameful 2025 Ophir Awards ceremony, “I decided to stop the funding of the ceremony from the money of Israeli citizens.”
According to Zohar, this great absurdity, that Israeli citizens were still paying out of their pockets for the disgraceful Ophir Awards ceremony, which represents less than one percent of the Israeli people, was over. Starting from the 2026 budget, this pathetic ceremony will no longer be funded by taxpayers’ money. The citizens of Israel deserve for their tax money to go to more important and valuable places.
Responding to Zohar’s comments, Assaf Amir, chair of the Israeli Academy of Film and Television, said, “As the never-ending war in Gaza takes a terrible toll in death and destruction, the ability to see the ‘other’… gives small hope.”
“In the face of the Israeli government’s attacks on Israeli cinema and culture, and the calls from parts of the international film community to boycott us, the selection of The Sea is a powerful and resounding response.” It comes after thousands of Hollywood industry professionals signed a pledge vowing not to work with Israeli film institutions that were implicated in genocide.
In October 2023, Israel launched its war in Gaza in response to the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage. At least 65,000 people have been killed in Israeli attacks since then, almost half of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.
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