VIDEO: Following Wide Backlash, National Lottery Cancels Prize To Film About Terrorist-Defending Attorney

In response to a sharp wave of public backlash, Israel’s national lottery, Mifal HaPayis, announced that it is cancelling its NIS 150,000 prize that was set to be awarded to a film positively portraying anti-Israel attorney Lea Tsemel.

Earlier this month at the DocAviv film festival in Tel-Aviv, the film “Advocate” that features the story of controversial attorney Tsemel was awarded a NIS 150,000 prize sponsored by Mifal HaYapis.

The prize sparked wide public outrage, which led thousands of Israelis to cancel their subscriptions to Mifal HaPayis.

Tsemel has gained notoriety for her persistent defense of terrorists with blood on their hands, including dozens of Hamas terrorists and Abdel Aziz Salha, who was pictured in the infamous photograph waving his blood-soaked hands after the lynching of two IDF soldiers in Ramallah in 2000.

According to reports, Tsemel also represents Arafat Irfaiya who earlier this year murdered and raped 19-year-old Ori Ansbacher HY”D.

The protest against the prize began in the beginning of June after the Choosing Life Forum of Bereaved families, who accompanied by the Zionist organization Im Tirtzu, began raising awareness about Tsemel and calling on Mifal HaPayis to cancel the prize.

Earlier this week, a number of bereaved families from the Choosing Life Forum protested outside the offices of Mifal HaPayis, spilling red paint on the floor and calling the prize “a spit in the faces of bereaved families and of the blood of our children that has been spilled.”

The families also handed out flyers to passersby and held signs with Tsemel’s quote about the 2000 Ramallah lynching: “What lynch? As if you could really think it was that.”

Their protest, which was widely covered by the Israeli media and on social media, sparked a wave of subscription cancellations that has reportedly amounted to a loss of some one million shekels for Mifal HaPayis.

Following the backlash, the directorate of Mifal HaPayis gathered Thursday and announced that they will be cancelling the prize that was intended for the movie.

In the accompanying video, we see bereaved parents who protested outside the office of Mifal HaPayis.