To give some background, after Israeli and international artists like Udi Aloni, Jane Fonda, Ken Loach, John Greyson, Danny Glover, Eve Ensler, Harry Belafonte, Julie Christie, Viggo Mortensen, Naomi Klein, John Pilger, Wallace Shawn, Alice Walker, and David Byrne discovered that the Film Festival was collaborating with the Israeli government, they criticized the Festival (read the Toronto Declaration) and urged other Israeli artists to withdraw.
To make several points clear, this was not an attempt to boycott the Festival as a whole, as it is being erroneously characterized by the pro-Israel smear industry (to use Daniel Levy’s useful term). It is not an attempt to boycott the Israeli film industry. It is an attempt to point out that world film festivals should not accept funding from the government of Israel to distract world opinion from its ugly Occupation and thus promote its political agenda. This is precisely the type of targeted protest by selective artists of a specific event which I feel is warranted in pointing out the harmful ways in which Israel exploits cultural ties for political gain.
Given the above, I was stunned to read J Street’s celebratory message of support for the Festival and its vicious attack on the Israeli and other artists who protested the government’s involvement in the event:
J Street applauds the Toronto International Film Festival for choosing Tel Aviv for its inaugural City-to-City spotlight.
Israel’s growing and internationally recognized film industry, centered in Tel Aviv, is rightly a source of pride for many Israelis and Americans. Through their art, Israeli filmmakers are presenting the world with a rich picture of Israel’s complex and layered society that goes deeper than simplistic headlines.
We find protests and criticism of the Toronto International Film Festival’s decision to showcase Tel Aviv’s film industry shameful and shortsighted…
Some critics say their objection is to the Israeli government’s role in promoting the films and not the films themselves. Israel, like many other European governments, supports its film industry financially
The cause of peace will not be served by demonizing Israeli film and filmmakers as being part of the “Israeli propaganda campaign.”
We were also dismayed by the Toronto International Film Festival’s co-director’s statement that Tel Aviv is “contested ground.”
We urge those protesting Tel Aviv’s selection to reconsider their actions. We also call upon the Toronto International Film Festival to hold strong with their selection and not be drawn into a political fight.
There are two dynamics at work here. J Street is beginning to come into its own as a formidable political force in the American Jewish community. It’s first national conference will take place at the end of October and it’s being viewed as a “coming out party” for the American Jewish peace movement. As such, it is under intense scrutiny from said smear industry and its least stumble will be examined and placed under the magnifying glass. That is why J Street has taken centrist positions of late that bring it into conflict with more progressive elements of the American Jewish community. While I am sensitive to the predicament in which J Street finds itself, I remind them that when you constantly compromise your values in order to prove your centrist bona fides to the Jewish doubters, you may not convince them and you may alienate those who’ve been with you from the beginning.
The second dynamic is that opposition to Israeli Occupation and policy since the Lebanon and Gaza wars has intensified and in a sense radicalized. Before readers start trembling in their boots, by “radicalized” I don’t mean that the peace movement has become anti-Israel or adopted positions that endorse hatred against Israel. I mean that as Israel has shifted the ground out from under us through its brutish militarism, we have been forced to examine new ideas we might hitherto not have considered as seriously as we do now.
The Global BDS movement is a case in point. Neve Gordon’s endorsement of BDS in the L.A. Times marked the kind of sea change in the anti-Occupation movement that the Walt-Mearsheimer book did in popularizing the term, the Israeli lobby. Along with Naomi Klein’s embrace, it forced many of us to re-consider whether this was a legitimate form of resistance to Israeli Occupation.
Also, many of us have become more sensitized to the contradiction between Israel’s joy at its independence and Palestine’s sorrow at the accompanying Nakba. J Street’s indignation at the notion that Tel Aviv is “contested ground” is part of a refusal by Israel’s liberal supporters to acknowledge the phenomenon. They are slow to realize that there are two legitimate narratives here and that you cannot affirm one while at the same time denying the other. That is precisely what J Street has tried to do.
In that sense, J Street is fighting a rear guard action in defense of the indefensible. The Israeli government must be confronted wherever in the world it attempts to advance its political agenda. And yes, J Street, Israeli funding of a film festival IS a political act. Israel, in the aftermath of its brutish campaigns against Lebanon and Gaza, wants nothing more than to let the world know that it is a nice, normal nation like Canada, for example. To refuse to understand that the government’s funding of the Canadian arts event is a form of hasbara means J Street is burying its head in the sand. And I say this not as an opponent of the group, but as a supporter who is saddened by an instance in which it has gone off the rails. As the peace train leaves the station, the Jewish peace group runs the risk of being left behind if it refuses to recognize new realities as they develop.
An Israeli peace activist wrote this letter to J Street criticizing its statement of support:
It is legitimate to oppose cultural boycotts, but your failure to address the human tights violations associated with the history of Tel Aviv-Jaffa (mainly the ethnic cleansing of its non Jewish inhabitants, and the ongoing discrimination against the small minority who has managed to remain in the city) does not grant credibility to your initiative.
There is no need for using harsh words such as “shameful” to describe the supporters of the petition against the Tel-Aviv events at the Toronto Film Festival. This amounts to a smear campaign.
It would have been far better for J Street to have remained silent on this issue than to have made an ill-considered public statement that does neither the Israeli artists who boycotted nor the anti-Occupation movement as a whole, justice.
I’m glad to see that you’re getting comfortable with BDS. But please be careful with the facts. Perhaps I missed something, but I am not aware of Israel actually sponsoring the City to City spotlight. It is funded by Canadian tycoons like the Aspers and such, and was clearly pushed by the Israeli embassy according to their own statements. I assume Israeli culture officials played some coordinating role, perhaps pitched the original idea to the festival and got the funders on board. But that is speculation. What we do know is that the TIFF is celebrating Israeli-Jewish Tel-Aviv, not spotlighting it critically, but embracing the city (which is virtually empty of Arabs) as an icon of diversity, in tacit support of “Brand Israel Campaign”.
Thanks for that contribution to the discussion.
The Aspers are an extension of the Israeli government in this & so many other things. In other words, they’re agents of the Israelis. Not as in espionage agents, but as in those who knowingly do the bidding of the government. I’ve read that the Israeli government provided actual funding for the Festival as well. But I’ll explore that claim & withdraw it if I can’t verify it.
I never thought I would say this but, Good for J-Street.
This is a perfect example of how J Street has gone off the rails. They’re agreeing with one of my more right-wing Israeli-American commenters!
What do you think of Phil Weiss’s reading of this? Morally, I think you’re right (and Phil agrees with you on the moral aspect) but politically it might be the smart thing for J Street to do–posing as the “centrist”, willing to criticize the supposed radicals who go too far.
Personally I hate that sort of politics (we see it in the Democratic Party all the time), but setting aside my feelings Phil might be right.
Politically speaking I don’t believe compromise will ever get you anywhere. You just get dragged down so far into the muck that you can never pull yourself up out of it again. Honestly, if anyone doesn’t believe ethnic cleansing is wrong, why would you WANT to compromise to accommodate this thinking? Ask Neville Chamberlain how well that works out.
“They are slow to realize that there are two legitimate narratives here.” Richard, would you explain to me the legitimacy of the Israeli narrative. It seems transparently clear that the “heroic” 1948 “War of Independence” was a brutal military conquest of another people’s homeland. I have never seen any meaningful justification of that colonialist and thoroughly racist aggression, settler colonization, and ethnic cleansing. Please explain to me how the Jews legitimately own Tel Aviv or any other piece of the stolen Palestinian homeland. “Redeeming our ancient land” and “God gave it to us” are hardly meaningful justifications. So what’s the legitimate Israeli narrative that explains the seizing of another people’s homeland, the theft of all their homes, farms, livestock, property and wealth, and turning the legitimate population of Palestine into refugees?
Steve: I’m not going to wade into that one. The terms by which you’ve asked the question show you believe you already have the answer. I don’t relish the idea of trying to explain something to someone who already knows what he believes on the issue.
Is Tel Aviv “contested territory?” It says volumes when even J-Street had to denounce the anti-Israeli Lunatic Left to retain credibility as a pro-Israel organization. Again, the lack of peace is not due to the occupation but due to Arab rejection of Israel’s right to exist. We are still waiting for Arab acknowledgment Jews also have rights. To date there has been none.
You’re within a hairs breath of losing yr comment privileges. Ad hominem insults go over with the Pipes-Horowitz-LGF crowd but not here. Read the comment rules about how to behave here or you won’t be commenting much longer.
Grandstanding & scoring right wing pro Israel political pts are something you do at the above websites, but not here. You can disagree here but must do so intelligently & civilly. If you can’t go swim in someone else’s sewer.
thanks for the thoughtful post! 🙂
i’m just curious though why the endorsement of 170 plus palestinian civil society organizations of the original BDS campaign call in 2005 (reaffirmed on numerous occasions since then) didn’t merit the need to reconsider your position on bds, but it took the words of neve gordon and naomi klein? i’m asking this b/c it’s a reaction from some folks that i’ve always wondered about, so any clarification would be appreciated…
also, i suggest that people who haven’t already, get acquainted with the actual basis of the unity of the BDS campaign website (bdsmovement[dot]net) as well as some of its key member groups: (1) PACBI; (2) Stop the Wall – (3) BADIL (can’t post the links but you can good them).
and by ‘good them’ i mean google them… 🙂
seems like the anti-Israel left is starting to seriously splinter…
“anti-Israel left” how nice. We have a rightist pro Israel troll among us. Those criticizing the Tel Aviv celebration at TIFF are not anti Israel. That is a lie. You are a liar & part of the smear industry. Write anything like this again & you’ll never write another thing here. You can disagree. But if you can’t stop yrself fr. lying then you’re unwanted.
Just because someone calls themselves “pro-Israel” doesn’t necessarily make it so.
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In the end, J Street is a great “hope and change” alternative to real Israel lobbying. Hope for terrorists and change that reduces the support for the only real democracy in the Middle East.
I say anyone who is a pro-Israel apologist calling themself “Mossad” deserves the right to publish at least one comment here, even if just for laughs. But if you don’t read my comment rules & try to publish more tripe like this the welcome mat will be removed, Mossad or no Mossad.
Richard,
Are you aware that Jane Fonda has done an about face on signing the Toronto letter? I just read your comment there concerning Heir. Spot on concerning her claim of friendship with him.
Check it out over on her blog. It’s the post after the one you commented on. She doesn’t seem to interact over there from what I could see. Just posts and then allows comments without commenting back.
“Expanding the Narrative” is the title of her post. I think she is losing it.
My God, the woman HAS lost her mind. She talks to one person & she’s in favor of protesting against the Tel Aviv celebration at TIFF. Then she talks to a Chabadnik & she does a 180. That’s often the problem w. actors. They’re ciphers and sometimes don’t even know their own minds. Any person who derives their ideas on the I-P conflict fr. a Chabad rabbi is simply sad.
Program, Program, can’t tell the sides without a program!
Roger Ebert just recanted his earlier NOT signing and has signed on. And the mayor of Tel Aviv is quoted by the Canadian Jewish News “He said that while the City to City program was initiated by the festival, the Israeli ministry of foreign affairs was involved as part of its Brand Israel media and advertising campaign, which was launched last year.” So Cameron, whom I respect, was at best disingenuous when he denied that link.