Here we go with another controversy at another film festival. No doubt the arts community will again say, “Enough already. Isn’t it the job of filmmakers and artists to raise questions, to make people think, to be controversial?”
Well, yes and no.
Unfortunately, nothing is simple when it comes to today’s politically correct climate. And certainly nothing has ever been very simple when it comes to Israel.
In the case of San Francisco, we had a Jewish film festival sponsoring a talk by Cindy Corrie, whose daughter, Rachel, was killed during a protest in Gaza.
Cindy, who has been outspoken against Israel, shouldn’t have been given a bully pulpit in a Jewish film festival.
Our response to the controversy currently surrounding the Toronto International Film Festival (see page 31a) is just as clear: The 50 celebrities on the attack are dead wrong.
The Toronto festival plans to focus on a different city each year, and its inaugural choice is Tel Aviv. As our story this week notes, celebrities such as actors Danny Glover and Jane Fonda, playwright Eve Ensler and writer Naomi Klein have signed a letter excoriating the festival for “staging a propaganda campaign on Israel’s behalf.”
Their letter went on to cite “the suffering of … former residents and descendents of the Tel Aviv–Jaffa area who currently live in refugee camps in the Occupied Territories” and compared Tel Aviv to Johannesburg, South Africa, a city once divided by apartheid.
This controversy is significantly different from the “Rachel” incident here, which focused on whether a Jewish festival was in the right — or wrong — for opting to screen “Rachel” and for spotlighting the anti-Israel views of Rachel’s mother.
The Toronto protest is “an attack on the heart and soul of Israel,” as Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center put it.
And it is misguided. The protesters blast a film program that they claim rhapsodizes about Tel Aviv without considering the city’s past; would the same protesters blast a program devoted to films about New York, saying the filmmakers failed to address how Native Americans were cast out of Manhattan?
To attack Tel Aviv, a 100-year-old city founded by Jews, a city famous for its innovation, tolerance and modern-day spirit, is indeed to attack the heart and soul of Israel.
It is to attack Israel’s reason for existence.
By challenging the creation of Tel Aviv, these contemptible protesters appear to desire the dismantlement of the Jewish state.
Let us applaud the Toronto International Film Festival for showing courage in standing up to this barely-disguised act of anti-Zionism.