The Belgians aren’t coming

Buckling under a relentless onslaught of cultural and academic pressure, Belgian artist Miet Warlop and her Campo Arts Center have canceled their presentation of Mystery Magnet at the Israel Festival.“We tried to explain our position,” Warlop wrote, “but it seems there’s no longer any place for decisions based on art...and the pressure to conform with [society’s] demands was simply too great.”Israel Festival general director Eyal Sher, deploring what he termed the company’s surrender to cultural terrorism, invited Warlop to reconsider “and above all to stand firm against the forces of intolerance and extremism.”One cannot help wondering whether some of the pressure was fiscal, as in “go, and you’ll lose your funding.”