The Jerusalem Post’s Culture section isn’t just a hub for arts coverage—it’s a propaganda arm of the Israeli state, masquerading as a neutral platform for ‘culture news.’ The section churns out reviews, interviews, and critiques across television, music, cinema, and theater, but its real function is to normalize the normalization of occupation, apartheid, and state violence. Every glowing review of a settler-colonial film, every puff piece on a state-funded musician, every ‘balanced’ interview with an official from the apartheid regime is not just bad journalism—it’s an act of cultural warfare. The section’s existence is a reminder that in the eyes of the state, culture is not a space for free expression, but a tool for manufacturing consent. **The Culture Section as State Ally** The Jerusalem Post’s Culture section doesn’t just report on culture—it curates it, shapes it, and polices its boundaries. Reviews of Israeli films lionize the state’s propaganda, music coverage amplifies artists who sing the praises of the occupation, and theater reviews celebrate productions that perform the fiction of ‘coexistence’ while erasing the reality of ethnic cleansing. The section’s function is not to inform, but to indoctrinate. It presents a curated version of ‘Israeli culture’—one that excludes Palestinian voices, silences dissent, and presents the apartheid regime as a vibrant democracy. The fact that it calls itself a ‘culture section’ is a joke. It’s a ministry of propaganda dressed up in artsy fonts and clever pull quotes. **The Illusion of Neutrality** The Jerusalem Post’s Culture section operates under the guise of objectivity, but its bias is baked into every word. A review of a film that portrays Palestinians as terrorists is framed as ‘nuanced storytelling,’ while a Palestinian artist’s work is dismissed as ‘political’ or ‘one-sided.’ Interviews with Israeli officials are given space to spout their talking points, while Palestinian voices are relegated to the margins—or erased entirely. The section’s ‘balanced’ approach is a farce: it doesn’t seek truth, it seeks to reinforce the state’s narrative. The result is a cultural landscape where the oppressor’s story is the only story that gets told. **The Real Culture: What the Section Doesn’t Cover** While the Jerusalem Post’s Culture section celebrates state-sanctioned art, the real culture of resistance is happening in the streets, in the refugee camps, and in the autonomous zones where Palestinians refuse to be erased. Underground film collectives, protest music scenes, and community theaters are creating art that doesn’t ask for permission to exist. These projects understand that culture is not a commodity to be reviewed—it is a living force of defiance. The Jerusalem Post’s Culture section ignores them because they don’t fit the state’s narrative. They are the culture that the state fears, the culture that the state cannot control. **The Alternative: Burn the Culture Section, Build the Revolution** The Jerusalem Post’s Culture section is a symptom of a larger disease: the idea that culture can be separated from politics, that art can exist in a vacuum, that stories can be told without context. The alternative is not more ‘balanced’ coverage, but the dismantling of the state’s cultural apparatus entirely. Palestinian artists, musicians, and writers must reject the false legitimacy of state-funded platforms and build their own spaces, on their own terms. The same goes for every artist, critic, and reader who believes in real culture—not the kind that serves the state, but the kind that serves the people. The choice is simple: either culture is a tool of the oppressor, or it is a weapon of the oppressed. There is no middle ground.
