A planned event with Russian-Israeli writer Dina Rubina in Uzbekistan was canceled following controversial remarks she made about Gaza, Russian state media reported on Thursday, citing a local ticketing office.
The ticketing page for Rubina’s literature talk was taken offline, redirecting users to a “404 Page Not Found” error. No official reason was given for the cancellation, according to the news agency RIA Novosti.
Rubina made incendiary remarks during a recent interview with TV Rain journalist Mikhail Kozyrev, in which she said Israel “has the right to cleanse Gaza and simply turn it into a parking lot,” as well as “dissolve all [Gazans] in hydrochloric acid.”
She also claimed there are no “innocent civilians” in the Palestinian territory and expressed the wish for the Israeli military to “destroy everyone” living there.
Kozyrev later said he had edited those comments out of the interview, writing in a Facebook post that he did not believe “those phrases should be allowed on air, not in relation to any group of people.”
In a separate post, the journalist apologized for removing the incendiary remarks, acknowledging that they were “dehumanizing” and should be seen in full. Kozyrev shared a link to the entire conversation with Rubina on his Facebook page.
Rubina on Tuesday pushed back, calling Kozyrev’s post full of “malice and manipulation.” She accused him of distorting her words to orchestrate a “dirty smear.”
That same day, Russia’s Spiritual Administration of Muslims called on police investigators to launch a probe into Rubina’s statements and urged Russian cultural institutions to stop promoting her work.
Rubina was born in Soviet Uzbekistan in 1953. After a career in Moscow, she emigrated to Israel in the 1990s and now holds citizenship there.
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