TORONTO – Sometimes anti-Israel protests backfire. The Toronto International Film Festival is a case in point.

TIFF chose to spotlight Tel Aviv in its City to City program, which was vociferously opposed by a pack of cinema insiders led by Jane Fonda, Naomi Klein, Danny Glover and academic and documentary producer, John Greyson. They were joined in issuing a petition by more than 50 others.

“On Aug. 27, John Greyson withdrew his film Covered from the Toronto International Film Festival as a protest against our City to City focus on films from Tel Aviv,” wrote Cameron Bailey, Co-Director of TIFF. “The next day, he and nine other Torontonians issued a petition inviting the city’s cultural communities to ‘protest TIFF’s complicity with the Israeli propaganda machine.’”

The result? As of 10 a.m. last Thursday, the program was sold out.

According to the box office, a few tickets to some individual movies may be available but all program tickets are gone.

It can be argued that this kind of  anti-Israel protest actually serves a purpose, generating ticket sales.

Actor Jon Voigt, a passionate supporter of Israel, accused  Fonda, his co-star in Coming Home, of “aiding and abetting those who seek the destruction of Israel.” He referred to the petitioners as “an evil, destructive force.”

Said TIFF’s Bailey: “As the programmer of City To City, I was attracted to Tel Aviv as our inaugural city because the films being made there explore and critique the city from many different perspectives. Furthermore, the City to City series was conceived and curated entirely independently. There was no pressure from any outside source. Contrary to rumours or mistaken media reports, this focus is a product only of TIFF’s programming decisions. We value that independence and would never compromise it.”

Rabbi Marvin Hier, a two-time Academy Award winner and founder of Simon Wiesenthal Center, held a press conference at the festival last week and said that the protest has taken criticism of Israel to a new low. According to the rabbi, the views of the signatories represent those of a vocal minority who are shamefully distorting history.

Rabbi Hier said, “Tel Aviv is one of the freest cities in the world – warts and all: a model city of diversity, freedom of expression and tolerance, for Arabs and Jews. It is the height of hypocrisy to single out Tel Aviv. These protesters cannot masquerade their hatred toward Israel, which so distorts their view.”  

Leading members of the film industry are also speaking out against the group that opposes the Toronto International Film Festival’s spotlight on Tel Aviv. Judging films, they say, by their country of origin rather than the quality of the artistic product, is censorship.

 Filmmaker David Cronenberg said, “I am against censorship in all its forms. The attempts to stop TIFF’s City to City spotlight on Tel Aviv amount to political censorship.”  

Actor Minnie Driver said, “Empowered groups of people, deciding whose stories can and cannot be told does nothing but remind us of oppression that has no place in filmmaking.”

Filmmaker Norman Jewison said, “The recent attack on Israeli films at TIFF is an attempt to politicize art.… This recent attempt at political censorship smacks of antisemitic bigotry. Let’s keep political hatred out of the artistic community.”

Filmmaker Robert Lantos, last year’s B’nai Brith Award of Merit honouree, said, “The attack on TIFF is a vile attempt by a gang of fashionable bigots to use coercive tactics to stifle voices they don‘t like.… Today, Jewish filmmakers from Tel Aviv get their turn.”

Filmmaker Ivan Reitman said, “Any attempt to…to hijack the festival for any political agenda …only serves to silence artistic voices.”  

Actor and director Saul Rubinek said, “Censorship has reared its ugly head now and again, against all kinds of art, for all kinds of reasons. The reasons invariably suit only the agenda of the one doing the censoring – as if the same specious logic couldn’t be turned on them one day.”   

Filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici said, “The Toronto International Film Festival has been hijacked by a group of so-called activists bent on furthering their agenda – to demonize Jews and to marginalize Israel – to bring about the destruction of the Jewish State….

Furthermore, they have chosen to align themselves with Gaza’s Hamas regime that stands for terrorism, fundamentalism and totalitarianism. It is a Holocaust denying organization that is against Jews, Christians, gays and women. There is no worse regime in the world and yet Naomi Klein, John Greyson and company have chosen to identify themselves with it.”