Next Thursday begins the 34th edition of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).  This year, the festival is starting it’s new City to City program that features films from a highlighted city.  The organizers decided to start off this program by focusing on Tel Aviv.  As a result, one Canadian filmmaker won’t be showing his film there.  John Greyson pulled is short documentary film “Covered” from the festival in protest.

Now, over 50 artists, filmmakers and activists have joined the boycott and signed an open letter to TIFF organizers.  Among those who’ve signed on to the letter are: Jane Fonda, Danny Glover, Eve Ensler and British director Ken Loach.  The endorsers claim that the focus on Tel Aviv at the festival is part of the “Brand Israel” PR campaign and therefore complicit in Israeli propaganda. The letter states:

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.

Of course, no boycott of Israel goes without someone crying foul and one of the first to start is Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.  He claims that “Whoever would sign on to a campaign like this would support the complete destruction of Israel.” Okay, whatever.  The open letter makes a point to state that the endorsers do not “protest individual Israeli filmmakers included in City to City” nor do they “suggest that Israeli films should be unwelcome at TIFF.” Jane Fonda even went so far as to issue a statement saying “I, in no way, support the destruction of Israel. I am for the two-state solution. I have been to Israel many times and love the country and its people.”

Festival co-director, Cameron Bailey, claims that their decision to focus on Tel-Aviv was independent of the Israeli government.   And he said that the “festival lineup also includes other important films from the region, including two films by Palestinian filmmakers.”  That’s what I find disheartening.  One of those Palestinian filmmakers, Elia Suleiman,  signed on to the letter but hasn’t withdrawn his film “Time That Remains” from the festival.  What gives?  Not cool.

Related posts:

1. Scottish Film Festival Joins the Israel Boycott Fun
2. A Cultural Boycott of Israel
3. “Flee” by Ahmad Habash
4. Boycott Israeli Dance Company on US/Canada Tour
5. Open Letter to Madonna: Boycott Israel