Jewish activists call for end to Israeli funding of Manchester Jewish film fest

Manchester Jews for Justice for Palestinians sent out the following press release today:

Manchester Jews for Justice for Palestinians are writing in response to the Jewish Film Festival taking place between November 6th and 23rd in Manchester, hosted by Manchester Cornerhouse, Cineworld Disdbury and Menorah. We welcome events celebrating Jewish culture and history. However, we oppose the Festival accepting sponsorship from the Israeli Embassy and ask the cinemas to refuse that funding.

Events sponsored by the Israeli state implicitly support the militaristic, expansionist policies of that state. The statements of the organisers of The Jewish Film Festival in London, in response to criticisms of Israeli funding, show, even more clearly the overt support for present day Israeli military policy.

The receipt of Israeli sponsorship offers no choice for the many Jews in Manchester who want to enjoy current Jewish culture, but want to distance themselves from Israel’s wars and military occupation of Palestinian lands. By accepting sponsorship, it furthers the well-funded international propaganda campaign orchestrated by the Israeli state, that makes the fraudulent claim that Israel and Israeli culture speaks for and in the name of all Jews. We challenge that claim.

We also want to stand in solidarity with the call for boycott from Palestinian civil society. For 50 days in July and August Israeli bombardment of the besieged Gaza Strip murdered over 2100 Palestinian people, mostly civilians. Over 500 were children. The relentless expulsion of Palestinians from their homes is increasing. Just last week, Israel announced that a further 1000 Jewish Israeli housing units will be built on confiscated Palestinian land in occupied East Jerusalem, in defiance of the UN human rights committee.(1) Yet a major film festival is taking funding from such a state? Due to inaction by the world’s governments over 200 Palestinian civil society organisations called for boycott, divestment and sanctions of “cultural institutions, projects and events that continue to serve the purposes of the Israeli colonial and apartheid regime.”(2)

The Edinburgh film Festival heeded the call and refused Israeli government funding. As Palme d’Or winning Director Ken Loach said: “The opposition was to the Festival’s taking money from the Israeli state…We remember that the Palestinians have been dispossessed for sixty years, houses destroyed, communities wrecked. Israel ignores international law, the Geneva Convention and many UN resolutions.” (3)

We at Jews for Justice stand against anti-semitism and Islamophobia and any form of racism. Saying “no” to funding from the Israeli state is not an attack on Jewish people or on an individual but on Israeli government policy. It is certainly NOT anti-semitic to call for boycotts against a state that has violated more United Nations resolutions than any other. Many South Africans such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu have joined the call. He has described Israel’s system of control over the Palestinians as even worse than Apartheid and called for similar global action.(4)

Palestinians like any other groups of people deserve to live in peace.  Over 300 Jewish Holocaust survivors and their descendants wrote an open letter to the New York Times, in which they unequivocally condemned “the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza and the ongoing occupation and colonization of historic Palestine.” It ended with a call to join the boycott movement.

“We must raise our voices and use our collective power to bring about an end to all forms of racism, including the ongoing genocide of Palestinian people. We call for an immediate end to the siege against and blockade of Gaza. We call for the full economic, cultural and academic boycott of Israel. “Never again” must mean NEVER AGAIN FOR ANYONE!” (5)

Manchester Jews for Justice for Palestinians

References

(1)http://news.yahoo.com/u-n-watchdog-urges-israel-probe-possible-gaza-124342464.html

(2) http://pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=869

(3) http://pulsemedia.org/2009/05/26/ken-loach-responds-to-critics/

(4) http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2014/08/20148213053785268.html

(5) http://ijsn.net/gaza/survivors-and-descendants-letter/