Culture Minster Miri Regev slammed on Monday decision to award the 2019 documentary Lea Tsemel, advocate with best film award at Doc Aviv, the International Documentary Film Festival in Tel Aviv.
Calling the choice to create a film telling the personal history of Tsemel, a lawyer who focuses on representing Palestinians in Israeli courts, “annoying and infuriating,” Regev said that “no movie special effects can mask” the work Tsemel is doing “against the State of Israel and those living in it.”
Tsemel, who began her legal career under the late human-rights lawyer Felicia Langer, spent roughly 40 years representing Palestinians in Israeli courts.Her clients range from former MK Basel Ghattas who was convicted of smuggling mobile phones to military prisons in 2016 to Ahmad Sa'adat who planned the 2001 assassination of Rehavam Ze'evi.
Tsemel was a member of the 1960’s radical-Left group Matzpen, where she met her husband Michel Warschawski. She is a member of Balad.