Controversy Over Israel Waylays Toronto Film Festival

The Toronto International Film Festival is one of the world's foremost film events. It features starlets, klieg lights, red carpets and all the hoopla that goes along with the world of cinema.

This year, the festival features Oprah Winfrey's much-ballyhooed film Precious, which won the People's Choice award.

But this year also features a development never seen in the history of TIFF. In August, Canadian filmmaker John Greyson ignited a furor when he withdrew his film, Covered, in protest of TIFF's City to City spotlight on Tel Aviv (the metropolis is enjoying its 100th anniversary).

The feting of Israel's premiere city at one of the world's most glamorous cultural celebrations was an idea dreamed up as part of a rebranding campaign announced with great fanfare by the Israeli foreign ministry. The project took on even greater urgency in the aftermath of the Gaza war, in which Israel's standing around the world took a severe beating. This is how the ministry came to include Tel Aviv's birthday bash as part of its rebranding strategy.

A year ago, in the Canadian Jewish News, Amir Gissin, Israel's consul general in Toronto, announced the launch of Brand Israel, a million-dollar initiative funded and organized with three leading Jewish corporate leaders who champion a hard-line, pro-Israel political perspective.

Among them is David Asper, scion of the clan that owns CanWest, the Canadian conservative media empire. CanWest owns conservative media properties like the Jerusalem Post and the New Republic (together with Marty Peretz). CanWest also donated $500,000 directly to TIFF.

The goal of Gissin and his pro-Israel corporate supporters was to create a multimedia branding strategy that would present Israel to Canada and the world in the most favorable light possible by shifting attention away from Israel's wars and occupation and toward its contributions in the cultural, technology and medical sectors.

One of the elements of the campaign was organizing the City to City spotlight on Tel Aviv:

The consul general also alluded to other major plans for next year in his Brand Israel attack arsenal.

He revealed the Dead Sea Scrolls are scheduled for exhibition in Toronto in 2009 and that plans are in the works for a major Israeli presence at next year's Toronto International Film Festival, with numerous Israeli, Hollywood and Canadian entertainment luminaries on hand.

With the help of the Canada-Israel Cultural Foundation, Israel will also have a "significant presence" at this year's TIFF, he said.

Greyson, in his protest letter to the festival -- and in the subsequent Toronto Declaration, signed by 1,000 international luminaries, including Naomi Klein, Danny Glover, Eve Ensler, Jane Fonda, Israeli filmmaker Udi Aloni, Ken Loach, Harry Belafonte, Julie Christie, Viggo Mortensen, John Pilger, Wallace Shawn, Alice Walker and David Byrne --  made clear that he was opposing neither the festival per se nor Israeli filmmaking.

And contrary to the Hollywood counterattack launched against Greyson and the declaration, he never called for a boycott of either. He was opposed only to the City to City spotlight.

In fact, Greyson says he has made a documentary profiling the most prominent Israeli anti-occupation activist, Ezra Nawi. The film will be screened in Toronto this month (not through TIFF), with financial assistance provided by the Israeli government. So nothing is quite as black-and-white as the opponents of the TIFF protest have made it.

Some of the key supporters of the Toronto Declaration have paid a heavy price for their support. Naomi Klein, also a prominent supporter of the Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) movement, was caricatured in a local Toronto newspaper as "hysterically" anti-Israel.