Culture Minister Miri Regev said on Sunday that “the show is over” and that “it is time that the Al Midan theater of terror will get off the stage.”Regev was speaking following a recent decision by the Register of Associations to submit a request to the Haifa district court supporting the closure of the foundation that currently runs the Arab-Israeli theater. Regev was speaking following the recent decision by the Register of Associations to submit a request to the Haifa District Court supporting the closure of the foundation that currently runs the Arab-Israeli theater. The register submitted the request following financial questions concerning how the foundation used funding it received from the Culture Ministry. The foundation failed to prove the necessary artistic activity required to justify its funding. Regev argued that this “proves what I said all along: Al Midan was not a theater but a stage for incitement and supporting terror.” Originally established in 1994 by the late former minister of culture Shulamit Aloni, it was meant to serve as an Arabic language theater serving the Arab-Israeli community.The theater became the focus of a public outrage in 2014 when it produced A Parallel Time based on the life of convicted terrorist Walid Daka, the commander of a group of terrorists who kidnapped and murdered IDF soldier Moshe Tamam in 1984.Daka, an Israeli citizen, corresponds with Haaretz reporter Gideon Levy.
Writing to Levy in 2015, Daka wondered “Doesn’t Israel have any other problems?" except the theater show. He also pointed out that a film had been made on Yigal Amir, who murdered then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, and that, unlike Daka, Amir is allowed conjugal visits and is now a father. The author of the play, Bashar Murkus, sued Regev in 2015 after her office suggested that Markus was inspired by Daka and sees him as a source of inspiration.