Censorship of Arab Cinema in the State of Israel, 1948-1967

Abstract

This article examines government censorship of Arab films in the first two decades of the State of Israel, through extensive archival use of documents of the Israeli Film and Theater Censorship Board. The state authorities had wanted to ban altogether the import of films made in Egypt, where the majority of Arab films were produced, but this was impossible due to the entertainment needs of the Arab minority in Israel, and of Jewish immigrants from Arab countries. The article sheds light on the government’s efforts to restrict as much as possible the showing of Arab films and censor their content. The censorship’s dual purpose was to prevent Arab films from awakening the national and political consciousness of the Arabs living in Israel, and to distance Jewish immigrants from their Arab culture, in order to promote their assimilation into hegemonic Israeli culture. However, the censorship’s attempts at political control over Arabs and cultural control over Jews was doomed to failure due to the emergence of a new means of communication and entertainment in the Middle East – television. This ended the cinema theaters’ monopoly over the consumption of Arab films, and thus the Film and Theater Censorship Board’s ability to censor them.