Jane Fonda Clarifies Support of Tel Aviv Protest

Jane Fonda writes on Huffington Post that a letter she signed protesting the Toronto Film Festival’s showcase of Tel Aviv’s film community was “unnecessarily inflammatory.”

“I signed the letter without reading it carefully enough, without asking myself if some of the wording wouldn’t exacerbate the situation rather than bring about constructive dialogue,” Fonda writes.

A number of filmmakers, including Fonda, Danny Glover, Julie Christie and Viggo Mortensen, signed a letter called the Toronto Declaration protesting the festival’s spotlight on Tel Aviv because of Israel’s continued occupation of Palestinian territories. The letter leveled criticism at the festival, but it was not a call for a boycott. Nevertheless, it has also triggered an outcry against the protest.

“Some of the words in the protest letter did not come from my heart, words that are unnecessarily inflammatory: The simplistic depiction of Tel Aviv as a city “built on destroyed Palestinian villages,” for instance, and the omission of any mention of Hamas’s 8-month-long rocket and mortar attacks on the town of Sderot and the western Negev to which Israel was responding when it launched its war on Gaza,” Fonda writes.

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“Many citizens now suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as a result. In the hyper-sensitized reality of the region in which any criticism of Israel is swiftly and often unfairly branded as anti-Semitic, it can become counterproductive to inflame rather than explain and this means to hear the narratives of both sides, to articulate the suffering on both sides, not just the Palestinians. By neglecting to do this the letter allowed good people to close their ears and their hearts.”

Fonda explained her rationale for signing the letter, writing that the salute to Tel Aviv “made the festival a participant in the newly launched campaign to “rebrand” Israel. Arye Mekel, the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s Director General for Cultural Affairs, has said that artists and writers must be enlisted in order to “show Israel’s prettier face, so we are not thought of purely in the context of war.” The protesters felt it was wrong for the much-respected festival to be used in this manner. The role of art, after all, is not to prettify but to expose reality with all its contradictions and complexities.”

Meanwhile, a group of Hollywood figures are among those signing a letter in protest of the protest. The Jewish Federation of Toronto was scheduled to take out an ad showcasing Hollywood’s support of Israel and the tagline, “We don’t need another blacklist.” The Jewish Journal of Los Angeles reports that those rumored to sign their names to this letter include Natalie Portman, Howard Gordon, Guy Oseary and Gail Berman. Producer Tom Barad has called the Toronto Declaration “absurd” and is circulating his own letter around entertainment industry circles, the Journal reports.

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Jenniffer Sheldon

Update: 2024-07-23

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