Tel Aviv unwanted in Toronto?

September 6, 2009 - 11:22 AM by David · 8 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Movies, Politics

Jane Fonda's Barbarella stands up against Palestinian oppression.

Misguided protests from loopy bastions of the artistic Left over Israel’s policies regarding the conflict with the Palestinians have resulted in a new height of absurdity.

Some 50 artists, actors and filmmakers, including Jane Fonda, Wallace Shawn, David Byrne and filmmaker Ken Loach, have accused the Toronto Film Festival in an open letter of protest of “complicity with the Israeli propaganda machine” over its spotlight this year of Tel Aviv.

The City-to-City program at the festival, which runs from September 10-19, is highlighting Israeli films like Kirot, Jaffa by Keren Yedaya, The Bubble by Eytan Fox, and Phobodilia by Yoav and Doron Paz, films with festival co-director Cameron Bailey “explore and critique the city from many different perspectives.”

However the open letter by the artists, prompted by Canadian filmmaker John Greyson pulling his short film “Covered” from the festival, claims that the 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.”

“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.”

Are these people serious? When did everything that happens in Tel Aviv, or any other part of Israel, suddenly get tied like a pretzel to the conditions of Palestinians? Even Bailey, in defending the decision to focus on Tel Aviv admitted that “Tel Aviv is not a simple choice and the city remains contested ground.”

Does that mean that Tel Aviv is occupied territory?

As the New York Times reported, “One thing is certain: What might have been one of the festival’s less noticed film series is going to get some attention when it opens on Sept. 11 with an 8:45 a.m. screening of “A History of Israeli Cinema, Part 1,” directed by Raphael Nadjari.”

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