Israeli Film Festival whitewashes occupation and apartheid

Announcing the 2015 AICE Israeli Film Festival, screening in Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra and Perth this August, Palace Cinemas’ website states: “This year’s selection of contemporary and historic Israeli cinema presents some colourful points of view, giving voice to the subversive, the political, the cultured and the deeply religious”.

The festival, according to Palace Cinemas, showcases films that “[reflect] on the vibrant queer culture in Israel”, “probe contemporary issues of faith and interfaith” and “confront audiences with hard-hitting real-life stories”.

Among the selection are documentaries about a small NGO “dedicated to promoting the rights of refugees and uninformed migrants in Israel” and “an education program aimed at bridging gaps in Israeli society”. And there is a drama about two women – one Israeli and one Palestinian – trying to build a business together and heal social divisions.

It sounds like everything you could want in a film festival. But there’s just one catch. The festival, sponsored by the Australia Israel Cultural Exchange (AICE), doesn’t showcase the cinema of a cultured nation known for the free expression of “colourful points of view” and “subversive voices”.

Rather, it whitewashes 67 years of Israeli ethnic cleansing, occupation and apartheid. Zionist Union Party Chairman Isaac Herzog underlines the propaganda value of the festival for Israel, stating in the festival program: “Such a cultural exchange is vital in the strengthening of the relationship between the State of Israel and Australia.”

A letter sent to Palace Cinemas director Antonio Zeccola in March, signed by 19 Australia Palestine solidarity organisations and 132 individuals, called on Palace Cinemas to respect the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI). Initiated in 2004, PACBI calls for a boycott of Israeli academic and cultural institutions because they “are complicit in the Israeli system of oppression that has denied Palestinians their basic rights guaranteed by international law, or has hampered their exercise of these rights, including freedom of movement and freedom of expression”.

To date, Palace Cinemas have ignored the letter and secured sponsorship from the Israeli Embassy in Australia to fund the festival. Last year’s festival, held just three weeks after Israel’s Operation Protective Edge military offensive in Gaza, faced protests at opening night screenings in Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney. This year’s festival has been scaled back from seven locations to just four. Once again, protests are being planned to coincide with opening-night screenings.

Israel has repeatedly used cultural events to whitewash its crimes. In 2006, the Israeli foreign affairs minister launched an initiative called “Brand Israel” to improve the country’s battered image abroad. In early 2009 – as images of broken homes and broken bones from the Operation Cast Lead attack on Gaza turned public opinion against Israel – the foreign ministry was given an extra $2 million to improve Israel’s image through cultural and information diplomacy.

“We will send well-known novelists and writers overseas, theatre companies, exhibits”, explained the ministry’s deputy director general for cultural affairs, Arye Mekel. “This way you show Israel’s prettier face, so we are not thought of purely in the context of war.”

In response to Israel’s propaganda efforts, the movement for boycotts, divestments and sanctions (BDS) has continued to grow. In Ireland, more than 500 artists have pledged “not to avail of any invitation to perform or exhibit in Israel, nor to accept any funding from any institution linked to the government of Israel, until such time as Israel complies with international law and universal principles of human rights”.

Last February, more than 700 British artists and cultural workers published a letter in the UK Guardian making a similar pledge.

The 2013 Dublin Israeli Film Festival, the 2014 London Jewish Film Festival and the 2015 London Israeli Film and Television Festival, have all been the subject of boycott calls by artists and cultural workers because of Israeli state sponsorship. On 9 June, in a letter to the UK Guardian, more than 40 artists and film-makers called on several British cinemas to drop planned screenings for the Israeli Film and Television Festival, making clear that their objection was not to the films or film makers, but the Israeli government’s sponsorship. “By benefiting from money from the Israeli state,” they argued, “the cinemas become silent accomplices to the violence inflicted on the Palestinian people.

“Such collaboration and co-operation is unacceptable. It normalises, even if unintentionally, the Israeli government’s violent, systematic and illegal oppression of the Palestinians.”

The inclusion of queer film for the first time in this year’s AICE Israeli Film Festival provides one such example of how the Israeli state seeks to normalise its oppressive policies. American-Palestinian writer Ali Abunimah describes this strategy as “Israeli pinkwashing”:

“[A] public relations strategy that deploys Israel’s supposed enlightenment toward LGBTQ to deflect criticism from its human rights abuses and war crimes against Palestinians and to seek to build up support for Israel among Western liberals and progressives.”

Jerusalem and Tel Aviv have long played host to gay pride rallies. But just how intolerant Israeli society really is was starkly demonstrated on 30 July, when Israeli settler Yishai Schlissel stabbed six participants of a gay pride parade in Jerusalem, killing one. Schlissel, a right wing Zionist, had previously been convicted for the stabbing of three gay pride participants in 2005, but had his sentence reduced. As Abunimah notes, Israel not only denies same sex couples the right to marry, but also lacks any form of civil marriage and prohibits interfaith marriages.

Schlissel’s attack on Jerusalem gay pride was followed a day later by an attack by fellow-Israeli settlers, who torched a Palestinian home in the West bank, killing a toddler and his father, and seriously injuring his four-year-old brother and mother. Israeli human rights NGO Yesh Din has documented 15 such attacks since 2008.

Yet Palace Cinemas director Antonio Zeccola remains unconvinced. Generous Israeli state funding, and the support of both Israeli and Australian state dignitaries, has kept Palace Cinemas’ doors open to the AICE Israeli Film Festival.

Friends of Palestine WA Convenor Tom Marcinkowski told Red Flag: “Palestine supporters will be outside Cinema Paradiso in Northbridge [Perth] on 20 August to declare that we won’t stand for the whitewashing of Israeli war crimes. While Palace Cinemas continue to host this festival we will keep coming back until Palestine is free.”