As a creator and educator, I have always believed that art can also change the world and educate humanity.
Many of my fellow artists did not like this burden of responsibility, and rightly so.
Artists are often a free spirit who does not like to be told what to do.
Over the years I have realized that opposition to art as education stems from the perception of the compulsive education model.
I mean, shut up, join hands, and do what we tell you.
But meaningful education is the complete opposite.
Education is to shout or be silent, to spread hands or combine, to recognize and experience all the possibilities and ultimately to do what is right for you out of choice, not out of coercion.
The more I created, the more I realized that art, like love, is merely an energy that passes from the creator to the work and from it to the viewers, even without words.
Therefore artists are not paid for their work, but for the vision they present to viewers.
A vision that allows viewers to experience other non-verbal experiences and ideas.
For at its best, significant art is beyond all the items that make it up.
It is beyond the lyrics and sounds of the song, it is beyond the dance shoes, and it is beyond all the colors of the painting.
Only in this way, through the sensory experience, are we able to truly identify with the otherness that emerges from a work of art, or to identify ourselves within it - as others.
This is how I could feel in the songs of Bruce Springsteen or Bob Marley, for example, the lives of people who are fundamentally different from me.
That way I could understand the complexities they were experiencing in their world and the life challenges they were facing.
That way I could find what we as human beings have in common and share with the world my experiences and bits of life, words and sounds, and especially the wonder created between letter and letter and character and character.
Anyone who has ever been involved in a political debate knows that it is usually of no use.
It does not matter the intensity of the mutual shouts, as the opinions wander the other floors of the same building and find it difficult to hear that there is anything other than their own echo.
At its best, art is the staircase that allows us to move between the floors of overly cohesive opinions, and to re-examine our basic positions in relation to the things that have been imprinted on us during our formal and informal education - whether at home, school or television.
Therefore, a truly great and significant art can not be summed up in the press release line - "This play is about occupation", because good art allows its viewers to experience something, long before, after and above, that although not understood at all, can be fully understood.
So there is nothing more boring than a piece that you know in advance what she thinks, how she feels and in what values she wants to convince you.
For such art is clearly an educational experience of "shut up, join hands and do what we tell you."
This week, the play "Basic Instinct", which was to be staged at the Fringe Theater in Be'er Sheva, was canceled.
If you will, you can see this as another sign of the city becoming a metropolis, since in the past such things were considered "traffic jams and cancellations on you Tel Aviv."
According to the creators of the play, the artistic director of the Fringe Theater canceled the show because he did not want all the noise it caused.
According to the summary, the play is based on the testimonies of female soldiers who served in the territories, part of the organization Breaking the Silence.
My main problem with the play "Basic Instinct" is that I could not watch it this week at the Fringe Theater in Bessarabia.
In the clips of the show I saw on YouTube, I saw actresses in pink military uniforms, Noa Kirl-style "Kmopop" songs called "Suri on the Occupation," and reckless whispers of "Sixty-seven, seven, seven."
If I had to extract from a "basic instinct" some new statement, I would focus on the feeling that the left has completely given up on talking about the occupation, so he prefers to hint at it in a self-conscious ironic section, it doesn't really move anything, but it's probably more fun.
From what I have seen it can be concluded that the message is quite banal: occupation = bad, opponents = good, right and most cool.
And that's it.
But what about the complexity that led to this situation?
And does the play offer anything new besides the "We will leave the territories, and all the problems of the world will disappear" replica?
Admittedly, I did not find it in what I saw.
If there is a novelty in the play, it is understood that even fringe artists, who create on the margins and are not committed to institutional money, even they do not try to challenge the audience in relation to the situation in Judea and Samaria, but dig across the Ayalon River with all the " To rake in some unconvincing applause from the convinced anyway.
Now that all this has been said, I would like to apologize to the creators of the show.
Since I base all my criticism as stated only on two clips I saw on YouTube, and that's really not a serious way to judge a show or anything.
The right way was to see her at the Fringe Theater in Be'er Sheva.
But this is where Shai Glick, CEO of B'Tselem, comes into the picture.
Glick is undoubtedly wasted as CEO, as he has proven to be the best publicist in the country.
The noise and hype created by Glick and a friend made many people who were not even aware or exposed to "basic instinct" want and see what it was all about.
I doubt Glick or anyone on his behalf saw the show.
It seems to them that it is enough for the play to talk about "occupation" and it is somehow related to "Breaking the Silence", for it to cross the guillotine.
Had it not been for the noise created around the play, it is likely that the play would have reached Be'er Sheva or anywhere else in the country, presented to a few convinced and nothing more.
But Glick, as well as quite a few artists, belongs to lovers of binary art, the kind that says what the final line in the account is even before the dishes are served to the table.
Anyone who censors art with such fervor is doomed to make it a hit.
Fact, here we are talking about a show that most of you would not have heard of and would not have heard of had it not been for the disqualification.
I'm not naive.
There are works that function as advertisements of murderous agendas, containing incitement and lies, whose whole function is to destroy and annihilate.
And as far as I believe in the human spirit, I would not invite the ISIS generators to the Carmiel Festival of Dance.
But an automatic response to anything that smells of the "occupation" will eventually end in a boycott of sauerkraut as well.
For more than it attests to the power of the culture of abrogation, this abrogation attests to the fragility of confidence in the righteousness of the path of the disqualifiers.
He who is sure of the righteousness of his way, is not afraid of one who presents things differently.
And he who believes in a repulsive culture, does not believe in art, but in education camps.
Moreover, strong on such a disqualification that will achieve exactly the opposite result.
For the culture of cancellation builds high and enclosing walls around it.
Walls of the kind that will arouse and arouse the curiosity to see and know what is beyond the wall.
Whoever turns any art into a question for or against, is meant to remain on the defeated side of history.
Do a seance and talk to Goebbels, Stalin, Mao Zedong and countless other commissioners who thought the human spirit could be educated through an artistic sodomy bed, but from a historical point of view they failed miserably.
The reasons for this are simple.
A great and significant art will not fail any polygraph test, nor will the best GSS investigators break it.
Listen to Vladimir Vysotsky, Victor Tzui, Joan Manuel Sarat, Victor Hera, Meir Ariel and John Lennon - huge creators who have managed to educate billions through their work.
Some also paid with their lives for their creation.
But that did not stop their creation.
As long as there is an eye that sees, an ear that listens, a heart that feels and a mind that thinks, the work will continue to exist in the lives of humans and farm girls wherever they are.
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