The 34th annual Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) has come under boycott for its efforts to celebrate the city of Tel Aviv, Israel. This year the Festival launched a new project titled City-to-City in which every year henceforth a city and its cinema will be “honored” by TIFF. Tel Aviv was selected as the inaugural city given that 2009 marks the 100th year anniversary of the city, and 10 Israeli films are to screened.

Many filmmakers and activists strongly objected to the selection of Tel Aviv on the grounds that TIFF is making itself a tool of Israeli propaganda by using Israeli cinema and the “bubble” of Tel Aviv to obscure Israeli human rights abuses and the occupation of Palestinian land. Israel’s foreign ministry launched a short while back a PR effort, “Brand Israel,” to improve Israel’s image. TIFF is accused of being a part of “Brand Israel,” though Festival organizers deny that their selection of Tel Aviv has anything to do with coordination with the Israeli government.

A Canadian, John Greyson, has pulled his short documentary film “Covered” from the Festival in protest.

Further, as part of their objection, 50 actors, directors, producers and writers, many of them Israelis, have signed a declaration of protest. “No Celebration of Occupation” reads in part:

In 2009, TIFF announced that it would inaugurate its new City to City program with a focus on Tel Aviv. According to program notes by Festival co-director and City to City programmer Cameron Bailey, “The ten films in this year’s City to City programme will showcase the complex currents running through today’s Tel Aviv. Celebrating its 100th birthday in 2009, Tel Aviv is a young, dynamic city that, like Toronto, celebrates its diversity.”

The emphasis on ‘diversity’ in City to City is empty given the absence of Palestinian filmmakers in the program. Furthermore, what this description does not say is that Tel Aviv is built on destroyed Palestinian villages, and that the city of Jaffa, Palestine’s main cultural hub until 1948, was annexed to Tel Aviv after the mass exiling of the Palestinian population. This 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 or who have been dispersed to other countries, including Canada. 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.

The letter is accurate in stating that Tel Aviv is built, in part, on the ruins of Palestinian villages razed by Israeli terrorist militias. As the Conde Nast Traveler noted recently:

Tel Aviv also has a hidden history. Neve Tsedek and Rothschild Boulevard were built on empty sands. But as the city spread inland and north, it swallowed up the remains of numerous Arab villages, whose inhabitants had fled or were driven out in 1948 (depending on which history books you read). Some villages were absorbed into Tel Aviv, others flattened. The Hilton Hotel is built on top of a Muslim cemetery. It is unimaginable that an Israeli hotel would be built over a Jewish cemetery. Salameh is now the Kfar Shalem neighborhood, home to poorer Jews from Arab countries, many of whom are threatened with eviction to make way for new developments. The Sumayil project, one of Tel Aviv’s largest residential developments, smack in the middle of the city, will be constructed on the site of the former Arab village of the same name. The Tayelet, the seafront promenade, is built on the remains of Manshiyyeh, Jaffa’s northernmost suburb.

The signatories, which can be viewed in the above link and include Naomi Klein, Jane Fonda, Danny Glover; added that they do not object to “the individual Israeli filmmakers included in City to City, nor do we in any way suggest that Israeli films should be unwelcome at TIFF.”

Naturally, Israel’s supporters took offense and Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, who is a two-time Academy Award winner for documentaries, issued a harsh denunciation of the signatories. Rabbi Hier stated that those whom signed onto the letter “support the complete destruction of Israel.”

“People who support letters like this are people who do not support a two-state solution. By calling into question the legitimacy of Tel Aviv, they are supporting a one-state solution, which means the destruction of the State of Israel,” he added.

Jane Fonda responded to Rabbi Hier by stating that, “I, in no way, support the destruction of Israel. I am for the two-state solution. I have been to Israel many times and love the country and its people.”

TIFF has responded that the Festival will screen two Palestinian films. Elie Suliman, probably the most prominent Palestinian filmmaker, has signed the letter of protest against the City-to-City “honor”. His film “The Time That Remains,” a contender for the Palma d’Or at Cannes, will as of now still be presented at TIFF, however.