Israeli filmmaker Udi Aloni has a response in today’s Haaretz to Jerry Seinfeld, Sacha Baron Cohen and the other Hollywood stars who have misrepresented and criticized the protest of the Toronto International Film Festival’s City to City program with Tel Aviv. Aloni was a co-author of the Toronto Declaration along with John Greyson, Naomi Klein and others.
In addition to challenging the misconceptions of the Toronto protest, Aloni also criticizes fellow Israeli filmmakers Shmulik Maoz (Lebanon) and Ari Folman (Waltz with Bashir) who have received international acclaim for their work about the Israeli invastion of Lebanon without providing accountaibility to those killed in the war. As Aloni says, "I came to realize that they are not haunted by the ghosts of their dead victims but rather, haunted only by the unpleasant images of war, and in their art they seek to create some peace for their soul."
Aloni:
Dear Jerry Seinfeld, you have made me laugh countless times and indeed I love you. Please don’t make a fool of yourself. Fight for the right of a Palestinian director to shoot a film in his homeland as a free man and do not go after those who take part in a legitimate protest.
We have no guns or warplanes that may kill women and children without distinction. We do have the right to protest. I expect a public apology from you for your part in the system of lies directed at us, the human rights activists in Israel, by the Israeli embassy in Canada, or rather suitable compensation for libel against me and my friends.
Personally speaking, I am against all forms of boycott against arts, regardless of the political view it conveys, but it is my right to protest against the cynical use of artists, us in Israel and you, the Jewish-American artists.
If it is real love of Israel which is in your hearts, please help us end the occupation, advise us on reaching a worldwide audience, correct us if you think we are overdoing it at times, but don’t cooperate with the occupation itself.
It has brought about the destruction of the Palestinian people and it will next bring about our own destruction, since there will be no free Israeli-Jew as long as the Palestinian is not free, having the same and equal rights.
You, Shmulik Maoz and Ari Folman, two exceptionally talented artists, you and the rest of the Israeli artists, please join our call "No Celebration Under Occupation." The debate about the part your films play in the Israeli propaganda campaign, can be interpreted by your actions and declarations, not just through your films.
To conclude, a call to all the Jewish artists in North America, Israel and elsewhere:
I think we should be asking ourselves not why Israeli directors create films about Lebanon (it makes sense that people will deal with their own scabs), and not even why Israel’s government supports these films and uses them for its own aims.
The real question is why the image of an Israeli soldier, agonizing and crying, is so appealing to festival curators and audiences of the western world? When we find the answer to this question, we will be able to comprehend the unreasonable, international sympathy that the state of Israel is awarded, regardless of its actions, which are perceived by the same West itself as violent.
