We had a recent post on Ken Loach and his prominent role in the storm opportunistically whipped up round Israeli director Tali Shalom Ezer over a paltry £300 donated by the Israeli Embassy to cover her travel and subsistence costs at the Edinburgh International Film Festival.
Via Modernity, Gary Sinyor, director of Leon the Pig Farmer, among other works, protests:
“…today, I am writing to the Edinburgh Film Festival and asking for my name to be taken off their records. I am removing Winner, Best British Film, Edinburgh 1992 from my CV. If I could cut the award in half and send half back I would. And here’s why.”
In the Independent, How dare you, Ken Loach and an accompanying report. See also a Scotland on Sunday report.
For the role of officials in supporting boycotts, see also our earlier piece on the Israeli Davis Cup match and the officials of Malmo.
Update: see also Unison refusing a Trade Union Friends of Israel a stall at its conference “for our own safety”.
Predictably Ken Loach is refusing to engage, this time on the pretext of “I don’t respond to personal attacks”. He surely realises that this protest is his due; before his personal intervention, EIFF had refused to bow to pressure.
Engage 
May 31, 2009 at 1:36 pm
“Although the festival is considered wholly cultural and apolitical, we consider the opinions of the film industry as a whole and, as such, accept that one film-maker’s recent statement speaks on behalf of the film community, therefore we will be returning the funding issued by the Israeli embassy.”
Not everyone seems to agree that Loach represents the film industry,
“An exposure of Zionist crimes, or a film simply this painfully honest, would be almost unthinkable in the American film industry at present. It will be interesting to see what happens to the film when it opens in the US in late December.”
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/sep2008/tff1-s18.shtml
http://socialistworker.org/2009/01/29/watching-defiance
note the Israel as nazis line,
“It’s more the case that Gaza is the modern-day Bielski settlement, facing one of the most powerful armies in the world.”
http://socialistworker.org/2009/02/05/zionism-looming-behind-defiance
So, no film about the Holocaust is “kosher” if it dare imply that, maybe, Jews were right not to remain in Europe after the attempt to wipe them from the face of the earth. Or if the film does not mention Palestine, as if the one invalidates the other.
(see also, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/poland-attempts-to-lay-pogrom-shame-to-rest-1327348.html on the fate of returning Jews to Poland)
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/movies/2009/01/28/2009-01-
28_harry_potter_part_of_zionist_conspiracy_.html
http://www.radioislam.org/sindi/jewmedia.htm
http://www.radioislam.org/sindi/jewmedia.htm
May 31, 2009 at 2:58 pm
http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/article.php?id=592
Looks like the Edinburg festivals have a bit of form.
May 31, 2009 at 3:11 pm
Can someone tell me where KL called for the boycott of the UK during its 600 year oppression of the Irish? An oppression that meant his movie, Hidden Agenda was to all intents and purposes banned in the UK?
Maybe he’s still pissed off that no-one would go near the antisemitic tract Perdition that he wanted to he direct. After all, he did complain (I am sure it was Loach and not Allen, but I could be wrong) at the time on the BBC that the refusal to show it was down to it was that owned the theatres.
Needless to say, there was much talk of the “power” of the “Zionist Lobby” around its being pulled. Loach remained silent (unless it was him who made the quote about Jewish theatre owners, in which case Loach joins the ranks of the antisemites par excellence)
June 9, 2009 at 7:15 am
Good news. Tali Shalom-Ezer’s film won 2008 International Women’s Film Festival in Rehovot.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1091453.html