After Israel’s culture minister Miki Zohar was embarrassed by the withdrawal of nominees from the state-sponsored film awards ceremony under the Netanyahu regime, he announced his intention to repeal the Film Law, which regulates public funding for the industry, and to halt funding for professional unions in the field starting in 2027. In addition, he froze a budget increase of 30 million shekels that had been promised for 2025.It would be a colossal mistake to dismiss Zohar as a mere “troll” seeking attention from Likud party primary voters, or to regard him as a second-rate Miri Regev – whose provocations the film industry and other cultural institutions successfully withstood during her tenure as Netanyahu’s minister of culture from 2015 to 2020.Rather than searching the archives for similarities to Regev’s term, it is crucial to identify the connection between Zohar’s decisions and other steps the government is taking to entrench an authoritarian regime in Israel, particularly through budgetary means. These include, among other things, the government’s takeover of the Israel Bar Association’s budget and control over how it is used; the decision to halt government advertising in Haaretz; and a proposed law that would require election candidates to direct all newly raised funds toward covering previous debts – designed to make it harder for Netanyahu’s political rivals to run in the upcoming elections.Also read: By Suspending an Arab Lawyer, Israel’s Bar Has Stepped Onto the Slippery Slope of DictatorshipZohar is wielding the budget as a “weapon” to force filmmakers and professional unions to fall in line with the Netanyahu regime and engage in self-censorship, just as justice minister Yariv Levin took control of the Bar Association’s budget to compel it to stop opposing the regime overhaul and its anti-democratic legislation, and to acquiesce to government-appointed judges.If the budgetary threat is not enough to persuade filmmakers and professional unions, the government is advancing a bill to split the role of the attorney general so that the position of chief prosecutor becomes a political appointment. The government would then be able to pull out authoritarian-era statutes from the British Mandate period and prosecute filmmakers for censorship and security offences, defamation and insulting public servants, breach of confidentiality and treason, aiding the enemy, harming foreign relations, disturbing the public peace, and more.One can, for example, imagine a scenario in which filmmakers produce a film that challenges the conclusions of a future Netanyahu-appointed commission of inquiry claiming that the primary parties responsible for the October 7 massacre were former Chief Justice Esther Hayut and the assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. When a criminal investigation is opened against the creators, Minister Zohar will no longer be remembered as a joke or a “troll,” but as someone who was part of the government that established an authoritarian regime in Israel.A scene from the trailer of No Other Land. Photo: Videograb from YouTubeThere is no need to look as far as Russia for examples. Israel routinely arrests Palestinian artists and filmmakers in the West Bank, which is ruled by a military dictatorship. For instance, last March Bilal Hamdan, one of the creators of the Oscar-winning film No Other Land, was arrested. The IDF issued its standard response, claiming Hamdan threw stones – but if that were true, he would not have been released; he would have been immediately sent to the Ofer Military Court and from there to serve a lengthy prison sentence.Therefore, minister Zohar’s decisions must not be underestimated. They should be examined together with the rest of the Netanyahu government’s actions as a single authoritarian whole – and resisted accordingly, in unity. Lawyers, journalists, filmmakers, and others are all in the same boat that the government is trying to take over, and if it fails, to sink.Eitay Mack is a human rights lawyer and activist based in Jerusalem.