Over 50 directors, artists and critics have come out in support of John Greyson’s decision to pull out of the Toronto International Film Festival. In an open letter to the Festival titled "Toronto Declaration: No Celebration of Occupation," the signers say:
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.
You can read the entire open letter, as well as the list of signatories, here.
An impressive list of signatories.
Note the many Jewish signatures there too.
Not everyone wishes to be an apologist for apartheid or a beneficiary of genocide, despite AIPAC’s claims.
Enough is enough. BDS.
Danny Glover is one of my favorite actors, I had no idea that this extended to not only artistic sensibilities but political ones as well.
link to guardian.co.uk
He trying to produce a film about the Haitian revolution. He wasn’t getting funding met because the film lacked white heroes! “Producers said ‘It’s a nice project, a great project… where are the white heroes?’”
This is a game-changer, folks. Jane Fonda, David Byrne, Danny Glover. Across the pond, you have others coming out: Gwynneth Paltrow, Elton John, Michael Palin, Paul McCartney.
Where the hell is Bono? And Madonna, the hypocrite. Don’t play Sun City, b****.
Nice collection of has beens.
Speaking of Bono, do you remember him mentioning a bit of mercy for the Palestinians at the concert U2 did in D.C. the day before Obama’s inauguration, when the phosphorus was raining on Gaza? It took huge stones for him to do that…and if you watch it on youtube, check out how long he pauses – he’s nervous as hell – before he says ‘…….and also a Palestinian dream!’. He looked scared to death even to be saying it. Guess he knows his career could come crashing down in an instant.
Although he says Israeli dream first. I would say it was smaller sized stones.
Wow, where would we be without bono….terrified, I wonder who looked more terrified the victims of the ocupation with the faces of death frozen into their faces
compared to the joyful blackened eyes of the attackers.
Madonna, that is a laugh she is on the side of crazy and not like a fox with the ridiculous statement while wearing an occupation flag.
The program didn’t say that Toronto was built on the site of an Indian village either.
I think the actors are misled by the framing of cultural relations with Israel/Tel Aviv as ratification of Israel’s policies. They don’t apply the same logic to appearing in New York or Washington during the Iraq War.
In contrast, BY appearing in an event on or in Tel Aviv, they could speak about it, as occurs in many Oscar presentations. Or, they could take the political position that Tel Aviv is a city like any other, bringing the expectation that consistent political criteria be brought to bear on it.
Now you are all over the place here witty.
First it’s “Toronto was built on the site of an Indian village” then its New York or Washington during the Iraq War.
You’re flailing.
Like Toronto has developed, it is no longer a colonialist apartheid city. When Canada was a colonialist apartheid state should it have been boycotted? You bet. When Israel stops being a colonialist apartheid state we’ll stop boycotting it.
Should Washington and New York be boycotted? Well I do engage in a “soft” boycott against the entire US though the US is not currently a colonialist apartheid state.
Interestingly there is a group that wishes to return to the time when it was one. Usually they make claims about the “Native genocide” (you know – it’s all overblown) and how slavery wasn’t as bad as it is currently made out to be. It’s just like those who claim that Jews are a bunch of whiners and while Hitler may have had his faults, he wasn’t nearly as bad as the press portrays him to be.
Isn’t it obvious that I think the dissenting world should be more engaged with Israel than to isolate from it?
That Israel needs the reminder of humanity, rather than this reinforcement that the world is out to eliminate Israel.
If Israel in its paranoia takes the world’s reminder of Israeli guilt as proof that the world is out to “eliminate Israel,” then it is the paranoia that is the problem, not the reminder of guilt.
As long as Israel keeps clinging to the denial of its guilt, there will never be any progress towards peace. As long as Israel is convinced that it has done no wrong in occupying Palestinian land, whyever should it withdraw from it? As long as Israel is convinced that it has not engaged in ethnic cleansing, whyever should it allow the return of refugees?
As long as Israel is convinced that it is not the guilty party, it will continue to frame itself as a victim of “Palestinian terror” and take no steps towards the redress of the injustice it has committed.
The world cannot afford to let Israeli paranoia continue to deny the truth. If the world fails to treat Israel as a criminal state, however can it recognize its own guilt?
I don’t anyone interprets Danny Glover as attempting to eliminate Israel from the map.
But, rational people do believe that Hamas does seek that, and that in the sentiment of “we have to defer to the vanguard of the oppressed” as a component of their reasoning, they then in some sense are Hamas’ agents.
Maybe there is a line where relative to BDS, Danny Glover will say, “that is NOT what I signed on to”, as I hope that Phil as some line that he’s thought about in advance, so that slow incremental escalations are assessable.
Palestinian vanguard and Israeli vanguard are guilty parties. The sufferers though aren’t Hamas and likud, but Gazan civilians and Sderot civilians (as an example).
BDS is an effort of the vanguard, presented as the only option to deal with an argued “inhumane” and “irrational” citizenry.
It ain’t true about either of them.
Brilliant Richard. Reward the kid who knifed his schoolmate with a spotlight on him at TIFF (one of the top 100 cultural events worldwide).
That is certainly going to bring the truant to heel.
Pathetic. How does it feel to look at intellectual dishonesty every day in the mirror, Richard?
BDS is not the effort of the vanguard. BDS is something which Israelis have worked for decades to achieve through murder and discrimination and apartheid.
Don’t like BDS, Richard? Talk to your AIPAC leadership and put some pressure on them to put pressure on the Israeli government for a just settlement.
Won’t happen you say…good then enjoy BDS.
Everyone else forgive me, but I have a few things I want to ask Richard.
Let’s step away, for a minute, from your BDS whipping-post, because I think our disagreement on that stems more from your characterization of Israel/Palestine as a conflict rather than an oppression. I think you can be reasonable, Richard, and I am not inclined to disagree with you reflexively. So when you say that the situation involves a dialectic, in which both sides act and influence each other’s actions, I buy that. As PART of the picture.
What I want to know from you is whether you see the rest of the picture: that there is a tremendous imbalance in that dialectic. That the imbalance goes so far as to constitute a qualitative difference between the sides — in which the Palestinians have the capacity to inflict minor periodic violence, while Israel has the capacity for systematic, everyday coercion as well as far-reaching violence. In other words, the difference between control and resistance. A dominant group and a subject group. (Indeed, that there are not really two proper conflicting sides, as the Palestinians are a stateless group of individuals, a minority of whom participate in several resistance organizations.) Do you deny that part of the picture? And if not how do you fit that into your “conflict” framework?
Do you deny also that Israel has used its power to maintain a privileged position for Jews in relation to the Palestinians, both within Israel and especially in the occupied land? And how does that fit into your “conflict” framework?
After we clarify these things maybe we can address BDS.
I don’t agree with your characterization Robin.
Israel and Palestine are each small fish in big seas. Palestine is a small fish in the big sea of Israel (though it shares a border with Jordan, jointly administered with Israel admittedly).
And Israel is a small fish in a big Arab and Muslim sea.
And now relative to the whole world, a small fish in a big sea.
They are each minorities in their worlds.
Opportunists look at those relationships as opportunities to impose, pretending at defense or solidarity. So, right-wing Israeli opportunists incrementally annex and suppress Palestine, and right-wing pan-Arab and pan-Muslim opportunists seek to remove Israel from the map.
The moderates in each camp don’t. The moderate Israelis seek a confident peace with Palestine, which is difficult given Palestine’s deferred civil war and Hamas’ very ambiguous commitment to recognize Israel (that somehow Norman F is “confident” of).
The moderate Arabs and Muslims seek (or would accept) a peace with Israel, which is difficult given Israel’s continued incremental annexation of prospective Palestine.
The radical Arabs and Muslims do not accept Israel on any terms, and the left doesnt’ distinguish between which alliance they are making. Norman F is very happy to ally with Hamas and Hezbollah, while moderates are not willing to.
They are as averse to that as I am.
In truth, a conflict, but at opportunistically different scales, depending on your political agenda, or selected ignorance.
Yes, Richard, all things are relative.
And the earth is but a tiny planet in a small solar system in a small galaxy in a corner of the universe – and all of humanity just a tiny chronological blip on that earth.
Relativity a great excuse for inaction and continuing to murder, imprison and starve the Palestinians.
But as none of it matters in the larger context, in the meantime why don’t you and your tribe try to do the right thing: civil rights, open borders to the external world, equal access to food, medicine and schooling?
Thank you for taking the time to answer me. It was an interesting response. Let’s leave aside for a second the problems with your characterization of the broader global political context (and Norman Finkelstein!). I agree that it is important to look at those issues. But it seems to me, they don’t change anything about the specific relationship between the Palestinians and Israel. In other words, if Israel is oppressing the Palestinians, that fact is true regardless of what is going on in the rest of the world. No?
That is my main issue with your response. But I also disagree with your characterization of the broader context. Israel is in no sense whatsoever a “small fish”. It is one of the foremost military powers in the world, the strongest state in the Middle East. It is nuclear-armed. And as added security it is allied to the world’s dominant superpower. Furthermore, to speak of Arab nations as desiring to “remove Israel from the map” sounds anachronistic at best. (It’s also the vague language of a propaganda talking point.) Iran is really the only state that can be described as having a volatile relationship with Israel. We are talking about a region with stable state borders, in which the United States and other countries have demonstrated a willingness to act as a police force against (non-Israeli) aggression.
Conflict between Israel and other states is currently a hypothetical situation – and an unlikely one. We can come up with all sorts of far-fetched hypotheticals that relate somehow to this situation. Occupation is real. The real violence right now is between Israel and the Palestinians. You can’t balance that against imagined scenarios. We have an obligation to address real situations, and to promote justice.
And Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians cannot be excused or even explained by any real or imagined threats from elsewhere. So I wonder still, why is it not oppression?
Israel has a hostile relationship with Syria (egged on by Iran), Lebanon (egged on by Iran), Gaza (egged on by Iran).
Historically, in the lives of the majority of living Israelis, they have experienced orchestrated, gruesome and intimate terror attacks and shelling over borders at civilians from Hezbollah in Lebanon, no direct attacks from Syria in a long time but the harboring of central organizations of militias that do, terror attacks staged in the West Bank, and terror attacks staged in Gaza and shelling from Gaza, shelling by scuds from Iraq.
While the Arab League has offered normalization at 67 borders, only long-treatying states (Jordan and Egypt) have diplomatic relations at all, and the others exist in a formal state of war with Israel (declared in 1948 for most of them, and not rescinded).
The conflict with Palestine is a mix of oppression of Palestinian civilians AND external relations with the solidarity Arab world and Islamic world. It would be nice if they were separated, and could be if the largest agitator renounced its support for terrorist/resistance militias.
The tangible conflicts between a Levant/Mediterranean Palestine and Israel are resolvable, even issues regarding water. There are certainly those in Israel that desire that a state of conflict continue, as that gives them cover for incremental annexation as a “defensive” strategy.
The relations between Israel and Palestine and pan-Arab and pan-Islamic allignments are not perfectly parallel.
The key feature to Israel’s quandry is that it is surrounded by forces (even if only factions), that seek its demise, and work for that, that do not even reluctantly fully accept its existence, its sovereignty.
In contrast, I firmly believe that Israel does exist, has a right to exist, and should not be subject to terror or other attacks on civilians. Instead, I believe that dissenters outside and within Israel should focus on successfully implementing reforms within Israel, and on creating the conditions by which Palestine can become viable and then assertively but respectfully treaty with Israel.
There are some comments of Fayyad that I don’t find helpful in his recent speech in which he outlined his plans to complete the institution building effort in the West Bank in two years, and then assert independance (by treaty if possible, unilaterally if not). But, I applaud the effort to focus on institution building, RATHER than resistance, as that makes a viable Palestine possible.
In contrast, the resistance primarily approach, does not create a viable Palestine, but an impoverished dysfunctional Palestine even if resistance efforts are successful.
It also calls the right-wing Israeli bluff. If a healthy, viable Palestine exists in the West Bank (who knows what will happen in Gaza?) that regards assaults on neighbors as illegal, then there is no rational basis for Israel to object to it.
Those on the left and left/right that post here, that think that resistance primarily will further anyone’s health except the leadership in Hamas military wing (not their social service wing), is deluded.
The self-help (with many others’ help) is effective.
You want a liberated Palestine? Work for it by encouraging their institution building.
Some of what Richard posts is valid, but it’s wrapped up with a patronizing, essentially one-sided outlook of Israelis who want to dictate their terms to the Palestinians. He is quite passionate about terrorist attacks on Israel and the threats to their civilians in ways that never come out when discussing Israel’s crimes. And when he does criticize Israel, he carefully limits his criticism to the actions of the far right. The language he uses of “moderates” who seek peace is part of this–so is his explicit policy of making peace with the West Bank first, with Gaza following. He speaks of the civil war between Palestinians, never mentioning how much that war was incited by the US and Israel. Ethan Bronner in the NYT, at least, is honest enough to point out that the US and Israel are striving to make life as unpleasant as possible for Gazans and less unpleasant for the West Bank as a way of splitting the Palestinians.
I agree that Palestinian violence and Arab anti-semitism are part of the problem, but vehemently reject the condescending and ultimately racist approach favored by Richard, one where “enlightened” Westerners treat Palestinians like lab rats, rewarding those in the cage called the West Bank and punishing those in the cage called Gaza. Richard is the worst possible advertisement for the sort of approach he says he favors–one which seeks reconciliation rather than punishment. You can’t criticize the crimes of every faction but your own and expect people to take you seriously and that’s what Richard does. When he starts criticizing the hypocrisy and crimes of so-called liberal Zionists and pays more attention to the crimes of Fatah against Palestinians, rather than giving them a pass because they are “moderates”, then he will have real credibility.
The discussion seems to have migrated back over to tactics and strategy. This is probably my fault, for writing too much in my last post and straying from my main points. But I want to stay focused on some of these central questions. I wonder if our disagreement on the word “oppression” stems from our definitions of “non-oppression” or justice.
So I want to ask you, if Palestinians and Israelis had a political relationship that was completely just and peaceful, what would that situation look like to you? And let’s try to leave aside (important but) tangential issues like how to get there, whether that situation is possible, and what relationships with other states would look like. I really want to focus on this core question, and I think we can agree that nothing absolves either party of the responsibility to seek a just relationship with each other.
This is what you’ve said thus far (but please continue to explain your views on this if necessary): “I firmly believe that Israel does exist, has a right to exist, and should not be subject to terror or other attacks on civilians.”
I disagree slightly. Jewish people have a right to exist in their declared homeland. Palestinians have this same right. (Therefore, limitations on right of return and freedom of movement are a denial of this basic right for Palestinians.)
My ideal of justice in Israel/Palestine consists of one or more states that all recognize the equal national rights of Jews and Palestinians (i.e. the right to live in Israel/Palestine). In addition, they would recognize the equal civil, political (democratic), and human rights of all citizens.
To the extent that Israel, the region’s current state, fails to live up to these basic demands (it falls well short on all of them as Palestinians are concerned), it has no legitimacy–no right to exist in its current form. It must transform. And it cannot be based on a racist ideology that says Jews must control the state (which I believe is a component of Zionism for many).
But of course, as you should know, the phrase “Israel’s right to exist” and its corresponding opposites “destruction of Israel” or “wiping Israel from the map” are propaganda talking-point language designed to conflate the necessary transformation of an unjust state with the genocide of a people. (Which is why they always pop up in discussions of the right to return, which has nothing to do with any sort of actual violence.)
But I hope you will forgive me for going a little off-topic again, and that we can continue to discuss our ideas of justice.
Witty, can we infer that you also do not favor the Israeli boycott of Ikea?
link to legitgov.org
The world is out to drive Ikea into the SEEEEEEEEEEEE!
In a related news – the National Federation of Israeli Journalist Union took down a series of paintings of Madonna-and-Child from its headquarters in Tel Aviv – because it reminded the Zionazi visitors of the face of a Palestinian female martyr (the suicide bomber)……
link to rehmat1.wordpress.com
um – it was the face of a Palestinian suicide bomber, superimposed on the Madonna image.
Would the NFIJU take down a series of paintings that offended those who had had relatives killed by the IDF?
There are far far more of those.
If memory serves the apartheid S African regime also initiated a “Brand S Africa” campaign back in the day when international pressure grew against it.
The petition would have been more impressive without Jane Fonda’s endorsement. Like her or not, her political sympathies are pretty well compromised even for a lot of liberals in the USA. Those pictures of her riding around on North Vietnamese assault vehicles are hard to forget.
That may be – but the Vietnam war was an attempt by the US to prevent a vote on S. And N. Vietnam joining together.
The US then murdered another 3 million Vietnamese + a few million in surrounding countries in an attempt to prevent self determination of the Vietnamese people.
Just so Jane Fonda is placed in perspective.
And, just to place the NOW in perspective, we have Brad Pitt playing a hillbilly leading a bunch of jewish americans to scalp germans and torture them in a scenario that didn’t happen during WW2. I have yet to hear what Brad or Wife think about
the Gaza massacre over the turn of this year, or of the Nakba…
@ Citizen,
I just saw Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds. The inferences seem clear. Spielberg is inferred to be a modern day Goebbels; vengeful Jews are inferred to be violent, scalping thugs via the cold-eyed, zombie-like Basterds, or green-eyed, revenge-driven closet psychotics via the Jewish female protagonist Shoshanna; Americans are inferred to be ruthless, crude, dishonorable hillbillies via Brad Pitt’s character; pro-Jewish Hollywood as an institution is inferred to be merely a legacy of Jewish Louis B. Meyer’s flip side of Nazi propaganda. Strangely, the Nazis are portrayed really as the only cultured, civilized, compassionate people in the film.
I’m not completely sure Tarantino’s film was intended to be subversive, or if it was some kind of warped tribute to violent Jewish mysticism in line with Madonna’s love for Kabbalah Israel and her blatant mainstream liberal double standards that give Jews a moral “pass” for Zionist savagery. In other words, it’s hard to know if Tarantino is mocking Zionism or if he is flattering and enamored of it. Like most pop-culture Americans on that issue, he might be too ignorant to know himself, although apostate Catholic Madonna has certainly knowingly entered into a Faustian bargain, setting yet another fine liberal example to teens across the U.S. as is her established “mission.”
@edwin: as I said, like her or not. But Fonda protesting something is going to turn off more people to the cause than her endorsement will bring. Sort of like, to flip the coin, a David Duke endorsement. You don’t want it even if you’re a racist because it only preaches to the converted, and even those who aren’t card-carrying nutters are unlikely to want to be associated with Duke’s name.
Whether Jane Fonda endorses this petitition or not, is not really the issue at hand.
Thanks for your tour into the past.
@Chris
I don’t think Tarantino means to be subversive…I think it’s more in line with creating an alternate mythology of ruthless Jewish strongmen.
The Jews get to be cowboys for once.
Remember all of those hate filled cowboy and indian films where the indians get murdered and every one celebrates.
American mythology is very bloody and this is just in line with the past.
@ alec,
The Jews got to be ruthless strongmen in the early Soviet Union; worse: Commissars. You know, those hate filled socialists that murdered millions of Christians that so many on the Left still celebrate. Read Slezkine.
International left-liberal mythology (and reality) are also very bloody. That’s one reason mainstream left-liberalism is so supportive of Zionism. That’s also why Obama has enthusiastically embraced Bush’s Mideast war agenda. In fact, some might say Zionism has become the Democratic Party’s latent religion. At least it has that in common with the evangelical Zionists.
Funny how the “secular” Zionist-backing federal government has managed to funnel taxpayer dollars and even steer the religious impulse towards support of the Jewish state. One might wonder if we’re not all being socially engineered to be Zionists.
“The Jews” got to be commissars.
Bullshit.
“The” is the key idiot word in your statement.
Those same “the” Jews, imprisoned a few hundred thousand “the other” Jews to Siberia for being Jews.
Richard, you just haven’t read enough Russian history. The Jews were at the forefront of the bloodletting with the sole exception of the Georgian Stalin.
By some accident of history, a Georgian butcher managed to outwit and outmurder the Jewish butchers.
Stalin later had the Jewish commissars do in other Jewish commissars. And as in Nazi Germany, many of them were happy to abet the communal murder in exchange for the right to continue to enjoy privilege. The end result was a Russianification of the state power structures, leaving the Russian Jews largely out of power until the 1990′s where Russian Jews were at the forefront of the massive theft of state assets under Yeltsin.
Now what would have happened to this world had the Bolshevik Jews managed to hold power in Soviet Russia (instead of ceding it to Stalin and his tight circle of Georgians) is a very interesting question.
not as hard as My Lai
Re: Stalin’s Jews
“Genrikh Yagoda,” the greatest Jewish murderer of the 20th Century, the GPU’s deputy commander and the founder and commander of the NKVD. Yagoda diligently implemented Stalin’s collectivization orders and is responsible for the deaths of at least 10 million people. His Jewish deputies established and managed the Gulag system. After Stalin no longer viewed him favorably, Yagoda was demoted and executed, and was replaced as chief hangman in 1936 by Yezhov, the “bloodthirsty dwarf.”
Politics of hollywood ..financial Barrons…musicians…etc.. these will never change the world for the better if they are not co ordinated and repeated continuously over and over again to the already brainwashed minions with no idea of what is really happening and to think if the majority finally realizes there was no god for real and the fables of old admittedly made to place these ideas in the heads of the rest of the world who would buy a gum wrapper from you too if you told them it was ..such and such.
the after effects of the relization take a long while to cope with if you have been raised with some kind of religious backround by catholic school , madrass’a and everyother religious bound belief. It is not a bad thing…maybe a let down..but just as my self I hold out 1% for the hope that maybe somehow I am wrong and he does exist..but I know better now.
The bottom feeders have returned.
Witty correctly senses that the “Jewish victim” mythos, and the Jewish exceptionalism mythos (the rules that apply to everyone else don’t apply to Jews), are the linchpin of the entire Zionist fraud. Once those myths are exposed as fraudulent, the entire justification, rationale and unwritten “pass” for organized Jewish barbarism in the Levant is shattered. In fact, a lot of the artificial and illegitimate Jewish moral authority in the West is shattered, as well.
Left-liberalism, too, hangs its hat on fraudulent Jewish-victim mythos. “Look what Christian moral authority did to the poor Jews,” goes the phony narrative. The Jews were never “poor,” and they always gave as good as they got, or more so.
Jews in the West have always been about as “victimized” as Israeli Jews in the Levant.
Witty, the swindle is finally winding down. Stop putting on airs.
Yeah, unfortunately. We’ve now got the anti-semites back here to balance the anti-Arab racists who flock together in the comments section at “Realistic Dove”.