Friday, August 4, 2006
According to Stephen Pollard, the Edinburgh International Film Festival has returned funding received from the Israeli Department of Culture -- a fairly de rigeur donation to support the showing of an Israeli film.
Pollard: EIFF says Jewish money is tainted money
The funding is, in this sense, no different from the travel bursaries provided by Unifrance, for French filmmakers, or the Goethe Institute, for German ones. It is not in the strict sense "sponsorship" (we are no more "sponsored" by the government of Israel, than we are "sponsored" by the French, the Germans, et al), though I understand that it may appear as such to outsiders.
However, this funding was secured some three months ago, well before the commencement of current hostilities in Lebanon. Of course we acknowledge that the situation has altered dramatically since then, and with this in mind, took the decision early yesterday to decline any funding from the Israelis.
Should the Israeli director choose to attend the festival, then the festival shall pay for his visit out of its own budget. But regardless of whether he attends or not, the film screening will go ahead as planned. Please allow us to explain why...
Therein ensues a bunch of tortured bullshit that boils down to the fact that although the film may be Israeli, and therefore icky, the director's films are made against his own country, and besides, the festival has always shown films produced in horrible places.
Of course, as Roger Simon notes, the director, Yoav Shamir, has been warned by the organizers that it might be "in his own best interest" not to attend the showing of his own film.
Don't expect Shamir to experience any sort of epiphany from this. The more insanely treated, the more his type feels shame and self-blame -- well, not self, exactly, but shame of his status as a Jew and an Israeli.
Sometimes, we are our own worst enemies........
And then, one fine day in the 1930's... outside the shop window... two soldiers flanking a sign... with a message...
"Deutschen, wehrt euch! Kauft nicht bei Juden!"
("Germans, defend yourselves! Do not buy at [the places of] Jews!")
And then, the Germanized Jew, having spent years of vilifying Jewishness (both the religion and the Zionist movement) to secure his status as a full and permanent German citizen, comes back to his shop, and sees, sprayed on the window...
"Bin ich nich ä guter Daitscher?"
("Am I not a good German?" - in mock-Yiddish)
And then...