Toronto protesters pick wrong target

Posted by Tom Tugend

The truly ironic part of the brouhaha at the Toronto International Film Festival is that the protestors against Israel government policy are actually punishing the one segment of Israeli society that has consistently criticized the country’s internal shortcomings, the conduct of its wars, and the treatment of Palestinians and foreign workers.
Under the banner of “The Toronto Declaration – No Celebration of Occupation,” some 1,000 filmmakers, actors and academicians are insisting that the Canadian festival organizers revoke their decision to spotlight Tel Aviv in their new City to City program.
If they fail to do so, the Canadians will be “complicit in the Israeli propaganda machine,” proclaim the righteous protestors.
The uproar comes at a time that the prestigious Venice Film Festival conferred its top prize, the Golden Lion, on an Israeli film for the first time. The prize winner was “Lebanon,” in which director Samuel Maoz targeted Israel’s 18-year conflict with its northern neighbor to illustrate the futility and horror of war.
“Lebanon” is not the first Israeli movie to criticize its country’s recent wars from a foot soldier’s perspective.
In this and last year’s Oscar races, the scathing Israeli anti-war movies, “Waltz with Bashir” and “Beaufort,” were among the five finalists for foreign-language Academy Awards.
Can anyone imagine a scenario in which Hollywood produced a mainstream studio movie about the futility of American soldiers fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan, now and not 30 years later? And then have the U.S. government heavily subsidize such a film, as is the case in Israel?
Israeli filmmakers are often even tougher on their country’s shortcomings and prejudices at home, to the point of making American Jews cringe, including those sitting on Oscar nominating committees.
During much of the past decade, the Israel Film Academy has bestowed top honors, and thereby automatic entry in the Oscar race, to movies that vied in painting the most self-critical and downbeat portrait of Israeli society.
In 2006, the self-lacerating “What a Wonderful Place,” featured a sordid lineup of Israelis, who pimp and rape imported Russian prostitutes, brutalize foreign workers, cheat on their spouses, humiliate their children and commit suicide.
In the following year, the top choice was “Sweet Mud,” the depressing story of a boy growing up in a 1970s kibbutz, whose members simply ignore the plight of his mentally disturbed mother.
The trend started earlier, in 1992, with “Life According to Agfa,” which was set in a Tel Aviv bar, in which the only sympathetic character was the Arab kitchen helper.
One cannot help but respect Israeli filmmakers for their willingness to display their country’s warts, as well as their restraint in not celebrating the Six-Day War victory with a series of John Wayne-style flag raisers.
But there is a drawback, as Israel yearns for the prestige and publicity of winning its first Oscar.
It happens that the committee that picks the nominees for best foreign-language movie is usually well salted with Jewish members of the industry. These may not be ardent Zionists, but they nevertheless resent heavy-handed portraits of all Israeli Jews as cheats, brutalizers and all-around lowlifes.
Apparently, Israeli filmmakers don’t see it that way, or don’t care, or both. When I raised such points with them during interviews, their reactions ranged from indifferent to resentful.
Not untypical was Dror Shaul, director of “Sweet Mud,” who observed that “We can’t be expected to make films in order to please others.”
On the other side of the credit ledger, Israeli movies have resisted the temptation to demonize the terrorists who regularly maim and kill Israeli civilians.
In such recent pictures as “For My Father” (Weekend in Tel Aviv), and to a lesser extent in “Seven Minutes in Heaven,” even suicide bombers are given recognizable human dimensions.
A growing number of Palestinian directors have sort of returned the favor.
Such movies as “Paradise Now” and “Lemon Tree,” have wasted no affection on the Israeli occupiers, but the latter are shown as human beings, not as caricatures or monsters.
Some years ago, I even recommended to my friends, only half-jokingly, that if they wanted to some nice Israelis on screen, they should patronize Palestinian, rather than Israeli films.
The most recent Israeli entries for Oscar honors happily have gotten off the ugly Israeli theme, and both “Beaufort” and “Waltz with Bashir’ came agonizingly close to taking home the coveted Oscar.
Both films were hardly recruiting posters for the Israeli army or part of the Israeli propaganda machine – a point that apparently eluded the Toronto protestors – but their sweaty, bored and scared soldiers came across as thoroughly understandable and universal human characters.