Boycotts will not heal Gaza; they will only silence the very artists still brave enough to build bridges

The 43rd Jerusalem Film Festival is around the corner, and I find myself wishing, with unusual force, that I could be in Jerusalem on opening night.

There is something deeply moving about cinema under the stars at Sultan’s Pool. Something ancient and modern at once. Jerusalem, of all cities, knows how to carry contradiction. It knows grief and laughter, exile and return, silence and song. And this year, as the festival opens on July 9 with Moshe Rosenthal’s Tell Me Everything, I feel that Israeli cinema deserves not only applause, but solidarity.

Israel’s creative professionals need it. Playwrights, musicians, composers, actors, comedians, writers, filmmakers and producers have borne a heavy burden since the Hamas-led massacre of October 7 and the war that followed in Gaza. They have lived through the trauma of their own society, the anguish of hostages and bereaved families, the moral torment of war, and the growing chill of cultural isolation abroad.

Invitations withdrawn. Exhibitions cancelled. Films avoided. Festivals nervous. Co-producers hesitant. Distributors afraid of controversy. Artists asked, implicitly or openly, to account for the actions of a state before their work may be seen.

This is not serious moral engagement. It is cultural flattening.

I understand that many people across the world are distressed by the suffering in Gaza. Any decent person should be moved by human suffering. War hardens language, and sometimes hardens hearts. The arts should be one of the few remaining places where human complexity survives. Yet the boycott of Israeli culture often does the opposite. It reduces artists to passports. It treats nationality as guilt. It mistakes silence for justice.

The irony is almost unbearable, because many Israeli creatives are among the fiercest critics of their own government. Israeli cinema has never been propaganda cinema in the crude sense its enemies imagine. It has often been restless, self-interrogating, morally uncomfortable and unusually brave. It has looked at war, trauma, family, memory, grief, faith, minorities, soldiers, Palestinians, and the fault lines of Israeli society with an honesty that many larger countries would struggle to tolerate.

That is why the campaign to isolate Israeli artists is not only unfair. It is........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)