Israel critic Vanessa Redgrave slams Toronto Film Fest boycott
In letter to New York Review, U.K. actress says T.A. artists deserve applause for questioning Israel.
By Haaretz Service Tags: Jewish World Israel news Tel AvivBritish actress Vanessa Redgrave - a well-known critic of Israel - has joined the controversy surrounding the Toronto Film Festival's decision to showcase Tel Aviv, according to the Jewish Chronicle.
Only this time, she is on Israel's side.
In a letter to the New York Review of Books co-signed by artist Julian Schnabel and playwright Martin Sherman, Redgrave defends the festival's choice to spotlight Tel Aviv and denounces those who have called for a boycott.
"We oppose the current Israeli government, but it is a government," Redgrave and her co-signatories wrote in their letter, "Freely elected. Not a regime. Words matter."
Redgrave and her co-signatories went on to say in their letter that the films being showcase in Toronto deserved applause and encouragment, precisely because they were created by Israeli troubled by their own government's actions:
"Thousands of Palestinians have died through the years because the Israeli government, military, and part of the population fervently believe that the Arab states and, indeed, much of the world do not want Israel to exist.
"How then are we halting this never-ending cycle of violence by promoting the very fears that cause it?
"Many citizens of Tel Aviv are particularly aware of the situation of the Palestinians and are concerned about their government's policies and their country's future. And none more so than the Tel Aviv creative community. This is exemplified by Israeli films that criticize their government's behavior.
"These citizens of Tel Aviv and their organizations and their cultural outlets should be applauded and encouraged.
"We do not agree that this involvement is a reason to shun or protest, picket or boycott, or ban people who are expressing thoughts and confronting grief that, ironically, many of the protesters share."
Artists who called for a boycott included John Grayson, Danny Glover and David Byrne and Jane Fonda - though Fonda later retracted her decision. Meanwhile, a number of Hollywood Jews, including Jerry Seinfeld, Sacha Baron Cohen and Natalie Portman, issued a counter statement in defense of the festival's decision.
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What you say has a great deal of truth in it, but the situation is easily remediable. All Israel has to do is to change its system so that everyone , regardless of religion, is equal before the law, and return or pay for all land it has expropriated.
"Thousands of Palestinians have died through the years because the Israeli government, military, and part of the population fervently believe that the Arab states and, indeed, much of the world do not want Israel to exist." The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that everything that Israel is, and everything that she does, flows directly from the fact that Israel exists at all. All those who complain about the shenanigans that go on in Gaza and the West Bank ignore the fact that these merely replicate the actions that made the creation of Israel possible in 1948. Nothing is happening now that hasn't always happened, and nothing that is happening now will cease happening for so long as there is a Zionist state in Palestine.
will improve a situation. The same types who do not turn up to say a counter Ahmadinejad demonstration for daily human rights violations. The mindless "3rd world ie proletariat can do no wrong,its all somebody elses fault" brigade have a lot of human misery to answer for.
I am not a celeb, so my vioce is small, while the vioces of the celebs mentioned in the article are large. Fonda long ago lost any credibility. I applaud Redgrave and the others who have held a consistent position for a long time and recognize the difference between a government's policies and the real common good of a people.