Israel’s largest film fund, the Rabinovitz Foundation’s Israel Cinema Project, has bowed to pressure from the country’s director’s guild to drop a requirement that filmmakers submitting projects for funding agree to what has been termed a “loyalty pledge” that their films does not “harm the good name of the State of Israel.”

The clause has been part of funding agreements from the Israel Cinema Project since 2017 and refers to a 2011 amendment to Israeli legislation called the “foundations of the budget law.” The law gives Israel’s finance ministry the authority to cut state funding for an institution if it supports activities judged to deny the “existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state,” that mark “[Israeli] Independence Day or the day of the establishment of the state as a day of mourning” or that “harm the honor of the country’s flag” among other criteria.