Boycotting the Israel boycotters

September 04, 2009, 1:17 PM by NP Editor
Charles Lewis

I picked up the National Post this morning to see the highly glossed faces of a group of actors, musicians and writers who have decided to protest the showing of a 10-film program to be highlighted at the Toronto International Film Festival.

It is no surprise that they are targeting a series of 10 films about Tel Aviv. Every protest today by intellectuals or artists who think they are intellectuals has to be about Israel. It is the worst country in the world, is it not?

The 50 protesters, including David Byrne, Jane Fonda and Naomi Klein, believe the films are actually part of a sinister Israeli propaganda plot, unbeknownst to those running the film festival.


They say, as they always do, that they are not anti-Semitic or anti-Israeli, but they feel they must say something in the “wake of this year’s brutal assault on Gaza,” and therefore the films should not be shown.

Some of the signatories, including Ms. Klein, are Jewish, so they cannot really be anti-Semitic. There are always the enlightened Jews who know when their coreligionists have gone too far. In fact, that is what Charles Lindbergh said in 1939 when he identified Jews as one of the main forces dragging the U.S. into the war against Germany:

It is not difficult to understand why Jewish people desire the overthrow of Nazi Germany. The persecution they suffered in Germany would be sufficient to make bitter enemies of any race. No person with a sense of the dignity of mankind can condone the persecution of the Jewish race in Germany. But no person of honesty and vision can look on their pro-war policy here today without seeing the dangers involved in such a policy both for us and for them. Instead of agitating for war, the Jewish groups in this country should be opposing it in every possible way for they will be among the first to feel its consequences. Tolerance is a virtue that depends upon peace and strength. History shows that it cannot survive war and devastation. A few far-sighted Jewish people realize this and stand opposed to intervention. But the majority still do not.

So congratulations Ms. Klein for being brave and far-sighted and willing to stand alongside those fellow … protestors.

Then there’s Jane Fonda. We should really listen to her. Was it not Jane who, during the Vietnam War, when 57,000 of her countrymen were killed fighting the communists, made the trip to Hanoi to offer her support for the downtrodden North Vietnamese? It was. You can find the pictures of Hanoi Jane on the Web, proudly watching a communist anti-aircraft team show her how they do their work. It is nice to see Jane coming out once again on the side of the angels. I am sure she was equally upset about all those Israelis getting blown to bits by suicide bombers and rocket launchers. But I could be wrong about that.

Danny Glover made some great films with Mel Gibson, who, according to some reports, has issues with some Jews. I am sure that really got Danny’s goat, too. Or perhaps not.

No one can prove they are anti-Semites, but they are guilty of exhibiting the same behaviour as anti-Semites, and as all bigots everywhere: they see people as one-dimensional. They have decided that Israel is no longer a normal society and that it can only be defined by its military actions. There is nothing Israel, or more precisely the people who live in Israel, can do to prove there is more to them than this conflict.

So I have decided to protest. As far as I am concerned all the 50 people who have signed this letter of protest are nothing more than that single signature. Nothing that has come before or is to come will ever change that. I will never read a Naomi Klein book. I will burn my Jane Fonda exercise tapes. I will boycott any movie that Danny Glover has ever been in or will be in and I am throwing out every CD on which David Byrne appears. The same goes for all the rest, but in all honesty I hoped never to read another Alice Walker book as long as I lived, so that will be easy.

Not that I have anything against these people; some of my best friends are artists.

March 18, 2009, 4:25 PM
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YITZI said...

It is interesting that you are so concerned about those who have been bombing Israel from the very day they left Gaza. What are you doing to harm the bombers?
September 6, 2009 8:01 PM

CONFRONT EACH ON THE BLACK LIST TO ASK THEM SINCE THEY WANT TO HARM ISRAEL THEY MUST ALSO HARM THE BOMBERS!
/////////////////THE BLACK LIST/////////
Toronto Declaration: No Celebration of Occupation

Wednesday, September 2, 2009
The Toronto Declaration: No Celebration of Occupation

An Open Letter to the Toronto International Film Festival:

September 2, 2009

As members of the Canadian and international film, culture and media arts communities, we are deeply disturbed by the Toronto International Film Festival’s decision to host a celebratory spotlight on Tel Aviv. We protest that TIFF, whether intentionally or not, has become complicit in the Israeli propaganda machine.

In 2008, the Israeli government and Canadian partners Sidney Greenberg of Astral Media, David Asper of Canwest Global Communications and Joel Reitman of MIJO Corporation launched “Brand Israel,” a million dollar media and advertising campaign aimed at changing Canadian perceptions of Israel. Brand Israel would take the focus off Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and its aggressive wars, and refocus it on achievements in medicine, science and culture. An article in Canadian Jewish News quotes Israeli consul general Amir Gissin as saying that Toronto would be the test city for a promotion that could then be deployed around the world. According to Gissin, the culmination of the campaign would be a major Israeli presence at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival. (Andy Levy-Alzenkopf, “Brand Israel set to launch in GTA,” Canadian Jewish News, August 28, 2008.)

In 2009, TIFF announced that it would inaugurate its new City to City program with a focus on Tel Aviv. According to program notes by Festival co-director and City to City programmer Cameron Bailey, “The ten films in this year’s City to City programme will showcase the complex currents running through today’s Tel Aviv. Celebrating its 100th birthday in 2009, Tel Aviv is a young, dynamic city that, like Toronto, celebrates its diversity.”

The emphasis on 'diversity' in City to City is empty given the absence of Palestinian filmmakers in the program. Furthermore, what this description does not say is that Tel Aviv is built on destroyed Palestinian villages, and that the city of Jaffa, Palestine’s main cultural hub until 1948, was annexed to Tel Aviv after the mass exiling of the Palestinian population. This program ignores the suffering of thousands of former residents and descendants of the Tel Aviv/Jaffa area who currently live in refugee camps in the Occupied Territories or who have been dispersed to other countries, including Canada. Looking at modern, sophisticated Tel Aviv without also considering the city’s past and the realities of Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza strip, would be like rhapsodizing about the beauty and elegant lifestyles in white-only Cape Town or Johannesburg during apartheid without acknowledging the corresponding black townships of Khayelitsha and Soweto.

We do not protest the individual Israeli filmmakers included in City to City, nor do we in any way suggest that Israeli films should be unwelcome at TIFF. However, especially in the wake of this year’s brutal assault on Gaza, we object to the use of such an important international festival in staging a propaganda campaign on behalf of what South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, and UN General Assembly President Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann have all characterized as an apartheid regime.

This letter was drafted by the following ad hoc committee:

Udi Aloni, filmmaker, Israel; Elle Flanders, filmmaker, Canada; Richard Fung, video artist, Canada; John Greyson, filmmaker, Canada; Naomi Klein, writer and filmmaker, Canada; Kathy Wazana, filmmaker, Canada; Cynthia Wright, writer and academic, Canada; b h Yael, film and video artist, Canada

Endorsed by:

Ahmad Abdalla, Filmmaker, Egypt

Hany Abu-Assad, Filmmaker, Palestine

Mark Achbar, Filmmaker, Canada

Zackie Achmat, AIDS activist, South Africa

Ra'anan Alexandrowicz, Filmmaker, Jerusalem

Anthony Arnove, Publisher and Producer, USA

Ruba Atiyeh, Documentary Director, Lebanon

Joslyn Barnes, Writer and Producer, USA

John Berger, Author, France

Dionne Brand, Poet/Writer, Canada

Judith Butler, Professor, USA

David Byrne, Musician, USA

Guy Davidi Director, Israel

Na-iem Dollie, Journalist/Writer, South Africa

Igor Drljaca, Filmmaker, Canada

Eve Ensler, Playwright, Author, USA

Eyal Eithcowich, Director, Israel

Sophie Fiennes, Filmmaker, UK

Peter Fitting, Professor, Canada

Jane Fonda, Actor and Author, USA

Danny Glover, Filmmaker and Actor, USA

Noam Gonick, Director, Canada

Malcolm Guy, Filmmaker, Canada

Mike Hoolboom, Filmmaker, Canada

Annemarie Jacir, Filmmaker, Palestine

Fredric Jameson, Literary Critic, USA

Juliano Mer Khamis, Filmmaker, Jenin/Haifa

Bonnie Sherr Klein Filmmaker, Canada

Paul Laverty, Producer, UK

Min Sook Lee, Filmmaker, Canada

Paul Lee, Filmmaker, Canada

Yael Lerer, publisher, Tel Aviv

Jack Lewis, Filmmaker, South Africa

Ken Loach, Filmmaker, UK

Arab Lotfi, Filmmaker, Egypt/Lebanon

Kyo Maclear, Author, Toronto

Mahmood Mamdani, Professor, USA

Fatima Mawas, Filmmaker, Australia

Tessa McWatt, Author, Canada and UK

Cornelius Moore, Film Distributor, USA

Yousry Nasrallah, Director, Egypt

Rebecca O'Brien, Producer, UK

Pratibha Parmar, Producer/Director, UK

Jeremy Pikser, Screenwriter, USA

John Pilger, Filmmaker, UK

Shai Carmeli Pollak, Filmmaker, Israel

Ian Iqbal Rashid, Filmmaker, Canada

Judy Rebick, Professor, Canada

David Reeb, Artist, Tel Aviv

B. Ruby Rich, Critic and Professor, USA

Wallace Shawn, Playwright, Actor, USA

Eyal Sivan, Filmmaker and Scholar, Paris/London/Sderot

Elia Suleiman, Fimmlaker, Nazareth/Paris/New York

Eran Torbiner, Filmmaker, Israel

Alice Walker, Writer, USA

Thomas Waugh, Professor, Canada

Howard Zinn, Writer, USA

Slavoj Zizek, Professor, Slovenia

To add your name to this letter, please send your name, occupation and country to tiff.letter@gmail.com. We will accept signatures until September 8, 2009

For further reading on this issue:

Letter by Canadian filmmaker John Greyson on withdrawing his film from the Toronto International Film Festival in protest against City to City:

http://tiny.cc/tiff_open_letter

Response by TIFF co-director Cameron Bailey to Greyson’s withdrawal and this petition:

http://www.tiff.net/ livefromthefestival/ openlettercitytocity

Report in Israeli daily Haaretz:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1110750.html spages/1110750.html

Report in Guardian newspaper, UK:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/ commentisfree/libertycentral/ 2009/sep/01/israel-palestine- boycott-film

Statement by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel

http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1085 etemplate.php?id=1085
Posted by TIFF Open Letter at 8:58 PM 15 comments
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Israel flap escalates as Toronto festival starts
Fri Sep 11, 2009 2:38am EDT

By Etan Vlessing

TORONTO (Hollywood Reporter) - The protest and counterprotest over a Tel Aviv sidebar escalated Thursday as the Toronto International Film Festival got under way.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, the Los Angeles-based founder of the Simon Weisenthal Center, told a hastily arranged Toronto news conference that the critics of the Israeli film showcase were taking criticism of Israel to a new low.

"Tel Aviv is one of the freest cities in the world, warts and all: a model city of diversity, freedom of expression and tolerance, for Arabs and Jews," Hier said as the Toronto festival kicked off with a screening of the British historical drama "Creation" at Roy Thomson Hall.

"It is the height of hypocrisy to single out Tel Aviv. These protesters cannot masquerade their hatred toward Israel, which so distorts their view," he added. The intervention by the two-time Oscar winner ("The Long Way Home," "Genocide") came as David Cronenberg, Ivan Reitman and Norman Jewison joined the chorus of supporters of the festival sidebar, who charged the growing artist-led protest with censorship.

"Empowered groups of people, deciding whose stories can, and cannot be told, does nothing but remind us of oppression that has no place in filmmaking," Minnie Driver said in a statement.

Reitman added in his own statement: "Film is essentially about telling global stories, of exploring the complexities and contradictions of the human condition. Any attempt to silence that conversation, to hijack the festival for any political agenda in the end, only serves to silence artistic voices."

The artist-led protest was sparked by Canadian filmmaker John Greyson, who withdrew his short film from the Toronto festival over its sidebar spotlighting Tel Aviv.

Organizers of the August 28 "Toronto Declaration" letter plan their own news conference at the festival, likely Friday, where they will unveil about 1,000 new actor and director signatories. The new recruits are understood to include Julie Christie, Viggo Mortenson, Harry Belafonte and U.S. author and activist Noam Chomsky.

The Israel Film Fund, which helped bring the 10 Israeli filmmakers to Toronto to be part of the controversial Tel Aviv showcase, plans a gathering on Sunday evening at the Isabel Baeder Theater to rally support around the film sidebar.

(Editing by SheriLinden at Reuters)