Boycott pledge draws signatures of top Hollywood actors and directors

AP:

Hundreds of prominent Hollywood industry figures have signed onto a pledge to boycott some Israeli film institutions — including festivals, broadcasters and production companies — that are “implicated in genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people”, organisers announced.

The group Film Workers for Palestine posted an open letter and signatures from Hollywood luminaries like Emma Stone, Ayo Edebiri, Ava DuVernay, Olivia Colman, Yorgos Lanthimos, Riz Ahmed, Rob Delaney, Javier Bardem, Tilda Swinton, Cynthia Nixon, among many others. The group said it has collected more than 3,000 industry signatures since Monday, when it first announced the pledge.

“As film-makers, actors, film industry workers, and institutions, we recognise the power of cinema to shape perceptions,” the open letter says. “In this urgent moment of crisis, where many of our governments are enabling the carnage in Gaza, we must do everything we can to address complicity in that unrelenting horror.”

The group said the pledge was inspired by Filmmakers United Against Apartheid, “who refused to screen their films in apartheid South Africa”.

The group has not called for a boycott on all Israeli film institutions, and says that it does not consider all film institutions in Israel complicit. The group advises people to ask questions and “seek guidelines set by Palestinian civil society”.

The Jerusalem Film Festival did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

The pledge also specifies that it is targeting institutions and not individuals: “The call is for film workers to refuse to work with Israeli institutions that are complicit in Israel’s human-rights abuses against the Palestinian people. This refusal takes aim at institutional complicity, not identity.”

A representative of the Israeli film and television industry called the boycott “misguided”.

“We are the industry that is struggling for years, making efforts for decades to promote discussion,” telling the story of the conflict from both the Israeli and Palestinian viewpoints, said Tzvika Gottlieb, CEO of the Israeli Film & TV Producers Association, in an interview.