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November 6th, 2021 
Awake Goy 
Over 200 people from the entertainment industry have signed a letter denouncing the Palestinian-led boycott of an LGBTQ film festival in Tel Aviv.
TLVFest is an annual event that launched in 2006 and is sponsored by the Israeli government. It’s been a consistent target of the BDS movement, which says that it “pinkwashes” Israel’s human rights record. Last year, in response to a call from Palestinian queer organizations, over 100 filmmakers signed a pledge to boycott the event. “As filmmakers, film artists and production companies committed to LGBTQIA+ liberation, we understand that our liberation is intimately connected to the liberation of all oppressed peoples and communities,” read their statement. “We stand in solidarity with the struggle of the Palestinian people for freedom, justice, and dignity. We shall do no harm to their liberation struggle.”
That call has been reiterated again for 2021 and, at this point, almost 200 people have refused to participate. While TLVFest takes place next week, Queer Cinema for Palestine (QCP) will hold the first-ever global queer film fest in solidarity with Palestine. QCP will hold over a dozen events across five continents and will feature many of the filmmakers who pulled out of TLVFest. QCP was created through a global coalition that came together during Israel’s deadly attacks on Gaza this past May.
The letter opposing the boycott was organized by a lobby organization called Creative Community For Peace (CCFP), which is directly connected to the pro-settler group StandWithUs. Both groups stem from a nonprofit called the Israel Emergency Alliance. In fact, the founders of the two groups are married. CCFP has repeatedly linked up with Christians United for Israel (CUFI), which is operated by the antisemitic, homophobic, Islamophobic, sexist pastor John Hagee.
A leaked report from 2017 revealed that CCFP identified solidarity between Palestinians and groups like Black Lives Matter as “a troubling and growing trend.”
“We stand united with all the participating filmmakers against the divisive rhetoric espoused by boycott activists who seek to misinform, bully and intimidate artists into removing their films from the festival or shame them for participating in the festival,” reads the CCFP letter. “We believe that anyone who works to subvert TLVFest merely adds yet another roadblock to freedom, justice, equality, and peace that we all desperately desire, especially for the LGBTQ community that is persecuted throughout the Middle East and around the world.”
Signatories include Mila Kunis, Neil Patrick Harris, Mayim Bialik, Billy Porter, Helen Mirren, Zachary Quinto, and Gene Simmons. You can read the full list at CCFP’s website.
“It’s rich of CCFP to describe appeals from Palestinian queers to international queer filmmakers not to participate in a complicit Israeli government-sponsored film festival as ‘bullying’,” the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) told Mondoweiss in an emailed statement. “But what can we expect from a propaganda group advocating for the continued violence of Israeli apartheid that considers intersectionality and solidarity between Palestinians and Black Americans ‘a troubling and growing trend’ to be countered.”
“The 50+ queer filmmakers who have withdrawn from TLVFest over the years and the nearly 200 who have pledged not to participate recognize the intimate connections between liberation struggles of all oppressed peoples and communities, and the need for effective solidarity. This true solidarity will be front and center at the Queer Cinema for Palestine film festival.”
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