Tuesday, September 22

To criticize Israel is a dangerous thing in today's Canada

Kathy Wazana

Two days ago, I came home to a message from my mother asking: "Why are you attacking Israel?"Once again, I am being tried for treason in the family court, my mother having read the headlines equating the protest letter I signed against TIFF's City to City spotlight on Tel Aviv with a call for the destruction of Israel.

"It is clear that the script they are reading from might as well have been written by Hamas," wrote Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre.

Toronto is built on destroyed indigenous villages. By saying this I am not saying Toronto should not exist or calling for its extinguishment.

Likewise with Tel Aviv. Our letter points out historical facts that we stand behind and are backed up by many scholars that we consulted before publishing it.

In the week since the publication of the letter, the authors of the letter have been called hypocrites, censors and, worse, anti-Semites. A ludicrous charge: five of the eight are Jewish and one is an Israeli.

These accusations seek to intimidate us into silence and shut down substantive discussion. This, ironically, is the very charge that is being levelled at us.

It's hard not to see these attacks as part of a deliberate strategy to divert attention from the real issues, namely Israel's gross violations of human rights and disregard for international law and, in this instance, the hijacking of Toronto's premier cultural event and putting it at the service of Israel's political agenda.

I am Jewish, with deep ties to Israel, and to my family members living there. Speaking out against the State of Israel neither diminishes my Jewishness nor puts Israel at risk of destruction.

It calls on Israel to live up to the standard of Jewish ethics that I grew up with. As though this should exonerate Israel, its defenders are always quick to point to the many countries where human rights are routinely violated, leading, inevitably, to the question: "Why are you singling out Israel?"

We do not deny or condone other countries that oppress their populations. Had Beijing or Tehran been selected as the inaugural City to City spotlight, and presented in an uncritical and largely laudatory manner, there would have been equally outraged protests.

TIFF singled out Israel for a celebratory spotlight, and its timing could not have been worse, in view of the ongoing settlement and colonization of Palestinian lands, of the continued construction of the wall that is enclosing the Palestinian population of the West Bank in a series of claustrophobic, prison-like enclaves, of the daily acts of humiliation and violations of the rights and the dignity of old and young alike, and, most recently, of the lethal assault on Gaza that left 1,400 Palestinian women, men and children dead.

The purpose of our letter was to point to a few things that are left out of the glowing descriptions of Tel Aviv as "a young dynamic city that, like Toronto, celebrates diversity." Many people are excluded from that diversity and Tel Aviv, far from being outside the conflict, is the military centre of Israel, a place fighter jets departed from on their lethal missions to Gaza last December and January.

Asserting these facts in no way argues that Israel should not exist or calls for its destruction. This absurd claim is being circulated with the express purpose of discrediting the letter and intimidating its authors into silence.

The accusations seek to divert attention from the issue at hand: the hijacking of Toronto's premier cultural event and putting it at the service of Israel's political agenda.

When Israel's consul general, Amir Gissin, launched Brand Israel in Toronto in August 2008, he made no secret of the fact that it was to culminate in a major Israeli presence at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival.

Welcome news in Israel where "the need to have an ongoing campaign that will implant positive emotional associations to Israel has become crucial," wrote Israel author Haskell Nussbaum in the Jerusalem Post. "The Foreign Ministry is beginning to get it."

Under the circumstances, it is hard to escape the connection between TIFF's celebratory spotlight on Tel Aviv and Israel's campaign to cleanse its image, and make it "more attractive," as Gissin told a Toronto conference in May 2008. "Not right, attractive."

Isn't that what the City to City Tel Aviv spotlight is about?

In Canada today, to criticize Israel is a very dangerous thing.

Documentary filmmaker Kathy Wazana is the founder of the Toronto Just Peace Seder and Playgrounds for Peace Initiatives.
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