Israel Experiments with Ending Government Censorship of Theater

A 60-year-old law subjecting plays and stage performances to censorship was to be lifted here at midnight Monday, for a two-year trial period.

Israeli bohemians planned to mark the occasion by gathering at the Tzavta theater club here for the staging and reading of extracts of plays that have been banned under the censorship regulations, which were first imposed under the British Mandate.

Interior Minister Arye Deri of the ultra-Orthodox party Shas announced his proposal to lift stage censorship when he took office at the beginning of the year. His rationale was that the theater-going public is capable of making its own decisions about whether to see a play or not.

But censorship of films will continue, Deri said, since films are watched by a wider segment of the public, including children.

The last film to be completely censored was “The Last Temptation of Christ,” banned last year on the grounds that it might offend the religious sensibilities of some people. But after a public outcry, authorities permitted the screening of a cut version of the film, which depicts Jesus as a modern-day figure with human feelings and urges.

Deri said he would reconsider the situation of stage censorship at the end of the two-year trial period and decide then whether to lift the ban permanently or reinstitute censorship.

He added that he planned to strengthen laws enabling any person feeling himself harmed or insulted by a play to appeal to the courts for a restraining order against further performances.

Observers fear that this will lead to a great increase in organized court appeals against plays or stage performances by religious or political interest groups.

Until now, those groups have had to rely on the judgment of the government-appointed entertainment censorship board.