Haifa Mayor Rejects Miri Regev’s Request to Prevent CPI-Hadash Conference vs. Nation-State Law

Hundreds participated Sunday evening, July 29, in an emergency conference against the racist “Nation-State Law” which was convened in Haifa by the Communist Party of Israel (CPI) and Hadash, with the participation of the Chairman of the Joint List, MK Ayman Odeh (Hadash), MK Aida Touma-Sliman (Hadash) and MK Mossi Raz (Meretz). The conference was held under the banner “Resist!”

The Mayor of Haifa, Yona Yahav, rejected on Friday, July 27, a request by Culture Minister Miri Regev to prohibit the meeting from being held in its planned venue, the Beit Hagefen Arab-Jewish Community Center. Regev’s request was made following pressure from various far right-wing activists in the northern city, which Hadash members said were part of a racist effort to silence them.

The Communist club of the Druze village of Yarka in the Western Galilee hosted over last weekend a "Druze Progressive Initiative against the ‘Nation-State Law’" in which two former Druze MKs, Dr. Abdallah Abu-Ma'arouf and Said Nafa'h, participated.

The Communist club of the Druze village of Yarka in the Western Galilee hosted over last weekend a “Druze Progressive Initiative against the ‘Nation-State Law’” in which two former Druze MKs, Dr. Abdallah Abu-Ma’arouf and Said Nafa’h, participated. (Photo: Al Ittihad)

In an urgent letter to Mayor Yahav, Regev claimed the community center hosting the event, which receives governmental funding, is not permitted to be the site of overtly political activity, and that she was planning to turn to the attorney general to act to bar holding the event there.

However, Yahav responded to Regev in a letter of his own in which he wrote that he had looked into the claims and found that “there was no reason to intervene.” He explained that the Beit Hagefen was not sponsoring the event, but rather was simply renting out its space to Hadash.

MK Touma-Sliman slammed Regev for meddling in the party’s event, claiming the culture minister “gets up every morning, looks for democratic and anti-fascists activities and conferences that do not align with her politics, and makes every effort to cancel them.”

Related: Posts on the anti-democratic efforts of Miri Regev