The reason behind their willingness to sign this declaration is because HAS NO TEETH AND is hundred percent safe since DOES NOT ASK FOR BOYCOTT OF FESTIVAL. Despite the fact that this petition does not demand for boycott, yet the racist Zionists are mad that is taking place. For example, one who signed this petition is the Zionist enabler, Jane Fonda, who has fallen in love with the apartheid state in 1980 when she went to Israel and has visited the apartheid state many times since her love with Israel at first sight.
She came to rescue one of the Zionists who left a comment at her website and was afraid of this petition to get out of hand. Jane assures her by writing the following lines:
[The letter we signed did not —repeats: DID NOT–call for a boycott of any part of the Toronto Film Festival. In fact, many of the people who signed the letter are showing films there and many of the Israeli filmmakers that go to the festival show films critical of Israel. We protest the use of Tel Aviv to rebrand Israel. We are standing up for integrity of art, not censoring anyone. The letter certainly did not call for the destruction of Israel or call into question the legitimacy of Tel Aviv as a city. But In the year when Gaza happened there shouldn’t be a celebratory spotlight on Tel Aviv.]
At least we should give some credits to this Zionist enabler for not wanting to celebrate after GAZA genocide compare to Nadine Gordimer, the novelist, who is known for being anti apartheid in south Africa yet she travelled to Israel to celebrate “Israel at 60” with other Zionist Jews, sixty years of killing, apartheid and confiscating Palestinian land, although many activists including Palestinians asked her not to go but all their words were dropped on her deaf ear. It was more important to please the racist Zionists than honoring toddlers who were burnt to dead by phosphorous bombs.

http://janefonda.com/trying-to-keep-up-with-false-rumors/

Toronto Declaration Unstoppable
Despite a week of attacks, artists from around the world rush to sign the declaration
TORONTO, ONTARIO–(Marketwire – Sept. 10, 2009) – The organizers of the Toronto Declaration – No Celebration of Occupation are pleased to announce that more than 1000 people from around the world-including many Israelis-have signed on in protest of TIFF’s City-to-City Spotlight on Tel Aviv. New signatories include music and cinematic legends Harry Belafonte and Julie Christie. Actor Viggo Mortensen, who will be attending this year’s festival, just added his name. Leading intellectual figures Noam Chomsky, Judith Butler and Anne McClintock have also recently endorsed the declaration, along with prominent Canadian writers Rawi Hage, Joy Kogawa, Dionne Brand, and Kerri Sakamoto. Celebrated local filmmakers Velcro Ripper, Min Sook Lee and Lynne Fernie have also signed the letter.

International support for the declaration continues to grow despite denunciations, unfounded personal attacks on earlier signatories Jane Fonda and Danny Glover, and despite an aggressive campaign of misinformation regarding the letter’s content.

The organizers want to make it clear that the letter does not call for a boycott of TIFF. Several of the signatories have much anticipated films in this year’s festival and many others plan to attend. Nor is it a protest against Israeli filmmakers, many of whom signed the letter. It is a statement of principled opposition to TIFF’s highly political decision to honor the city of Tel-Aviv with a celebratory “spotlight” this year.

Such a celebration, especially in light of the recent Israeli attacks on Gaza, not only ignores Palestinian suffering, but also helps to whitewash Israel’s continued violations of international law. According to Naomi Klein, one declaration’s co-authors, “Publicly opposing TIFF’s decision is not an act of censorship, but its opposite: the use of cherished rights of freedom of speech and opinion.”

In an effort to promote ongoing critical debate about Tel Aviv, Israel and Palestine, organizers will be holding a public forum featuring key signatories on Monday, September 14, 2009. There will be an opportunity for press to talk to spokespeople prior to the event, beginning at 5pm. Location and further details to follow.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009
The Toronto Declaration: No Celebration of Occupation

An Open Letter to the Toronto International Film Festival:

(Le texte français suit l’anglais – Spanish text also below)

September 2, 2009

As members of the Canadian and international film, culture and media arts communities, we are deeply disturbed by the Toronto International Film Festival’s decision to host a celebratory spotlight on Tel Aviv. We protest that TIFF, whether intentionally or not, has become complicit in the Israeli propaganda machine.

In 2008, the Israeli government and Canadian partners Sidney Greenberg of Astral Media, David Asper of Canwest Global Communications and Joel Reitman of MIJO Corporation launched “Brand Israel,” a million dollar media and advertising campaign aimed at changing Canadian perceptions of Israel. Brand Israel would take the focus off Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and its aggressive wars, and refocus it on achievements in medicine, science and culture. An article in Canadian Jewish News quotes Israeli consul general Amir Gissin as saying that Toronto would be the test city for a promotion that could then be deployed around the world. According to Gissin, the culmination of the campaign would be a major Israeli presence at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival. (Andy Levy-Alzenkopf, “Brand Israel set to launch in GTA,” Canadian Jewish News, August 28, 2008.)

In 2009, TIFF announced that it would inaugurate its new City to City program with a focus on Tel Aviv. According to program notes by Festival co-director and City to City programmer Cameron Bailey, “The ten films in this year’s City to City programme will showcase the complex currents running through today’s Tel Aviv. Celebrating its 100th birthday in 2009, Tel Aviv is a young, dynamic city that, like Toronto, celebrates its diversity.

The emphasis on ‘diversity’ in City to City is empty given the absence of Palestinian filmmakers in the program. Furthermore, what this description does not say is that Tel Aviv is built on destroyed Palestinian villages, and that the city of Jaffa, Palestine’s main cultural hub until 1948, was annexed to Tel Aviv after the mass exiling of the Palestinian population. This program ignores the suffering of thousands of former residents and descendants of the Tel Aviv/Jaffa area who currently live in refugee camps in the Occupied Territories or who have been dispersed to other countries, including Canada. Looking at modern, sophisticated Tel Aviv without also considering the city’s past and the realities of Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza strip, would be like rhapsodizing about the beauty and elegant lifestyles in white-only Cape Town or Johannesburg during apartheid without acknowledging the corresponding black townships of Khayelitsha and Soweto.

We do not protest the individual Israeli filmmakers included in City to City, nor do we in any way suggest that Israeli films should be unwelcome at TIFF. However, especially in the wake of this year’s brutal assault on Gaza, we object to the use of such an important international festival in staging a propaganda campaign on behalf of what South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, and UN General Assembly President Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann have all characterized as an apartheid regime.

This letter was drafted by the following ad hoc committee:

Udi Aloni, filmmaker, Israel; Elle Flanders, filmmaker, Canada; Richard Fung, video artist, Canada; John Greyson, filmmaker, Canada; Naomi Klein, writer and filmmaker, Canada; Kathy Wazana, filmmaker, Canada; Cynthia Wright, writer and academic, Canada; b h Yael, film and video artist, Canada

Endorsed By:
hmad Abdalla, Filmmaker, Egypt
Hany Abu-Assad, Filmmaker, Palestine
Mark Achbar, Filmmaker, Canada
Zackie Achmat, AIDS activist, South Africa
Ra’anan Alexandrowicz, Filmmaker, Jerusalem
Anthony Arnove, Publisher and Producer, USA
Ruba Atiyeh, Documentary Director, Lebanon
Joslyn Barnes, Writer and Producer, USA
Harry Belafonte, Musician/Actor, USA
John Berger, Author, France
Walter Bernstein, Screenwriter/Film Producer, USA
Dionne Brand, Poet/Writer, Canada
Daniel Boyarin, Professor, USA
Judith Butler, Professor, USA
David Byrne, Musician, USA
Noam Chomsky, Professor, USA
Julie Christie, Actor, USA
Guy Davidi Director, Israel
Na-iem Dollie, Journalist/Writer, South Africa
Igor Drljaca, Filmmaker, Canada
Eve Ensler, Playwright, Author, USA
Eyal Eithcowich, Director, Israel
Lynne Fernie, Filmmaker and Programmer, Canada
Sophie Fiennes, Filmmaker, UK
Peter Fitting, Professor, Canada
Jane Fonda, Actor and Author, USA
Danny Glover, Filmmaker and Actor, USA
Noam Gonick, Director, Canada
Malcolm Guy, Filmmaker, Canada
Rawi Hage, Writer, Canada
Anne Henderson, Filmmaker, Canada
Mike Hoolboom, Filmmaker, Canada
Annemarie Jacir, Filmmaker, Palestine
Gordon Jackson, Jazz Musician, South Africa
Fredric Jameson, Literary Critic, USA
Juliano Mer Khamis, Filmmaker, Jenin/Haifa
Bonnie Sherr Klein Filmmaker, Canada
Joy Kogawa, Writer, Canada
Paul Laverty, Producer, UK
Min Sook Lee, Filmmaker, Canada
Paul Lee, Filmmaker, Canada
Yael Lerer, publisher, Tel Aviv
Mark Levine, Professor, USA
Jack Lewis, Filmmaker, South Africa
Ken Loach, Filmmaker, UK
Arab Lotfi, Filmmaker, Egypt/Lebanon
Kyo Maclear, Author, Toronto
Mahmood Mamdani, Professor, USA
Fatima Mawas, Filmmaker, Australia
Anne McClintock, Professor, USA
Tessa McWatt, Author, Canada and UK
Viggo Mortensen, Actor, USA
Cornelius Moore, Film Distributor, USA
Yousry Nasrallah, Director, Egypt
Joan Nestle, Writer, USA
Rebecca O’Brien, Producer, UK
Pratibha Parmar, Producer/Director, UK
Anand Patwardhan, Documentary Film Maker, India
Jeremy Pikser, Screenwriter, USA
John Pilger, Filmmaker, UK
Shai Carmeli Pollak, Filmmaker, Israel
Ian Iqbal Rashid, Filmmaker, Canada
Judy Rebick, Professor, Canada
David Reeb, Artist, Tel Aviv
B. Ruby Rich, Critic and Professor, USA
Wallace Shawn, Playwright, Actor, USA
Eyal Sivan, Filmmaker and Scholar, Paris/London/Sderot
Elia Suleiman, Fimmlaker, Nazareth/Paris/New York
Eran Torbiner, Filmmaker, Israel
Alice Walker, Writer, USA
Thomas Waugh, Professor, Canada
Christian Wiener Freso, President – Union of Peruvian Filmmakers, Peru
Debra Zimmerman, Executive Director Women Make Movies, USA
Howard Zinn, Writer, USA
Slavoj Zizek, Professor, Slovenia

However since you keep insisting on bringing up the Armenian genocide, (which by the way was wholly different to the other genocide you folk keep bringing up at the slightest opportunity), in a “look at those evil “moooosleeeeems, we jews are lovely” manner…..

I’d like to enlighten you that ironically many in the “young Turks” were quite jewish. Many people have said even Attaturk may have had very extensive jewish roots, thus his failed war at removing Islam from Turkey and the slaughtering of many muslims with supposed influence along with the Armenians you like to support. Certainly makes you think does it not?

Do your research please and not simply from books written by zionistically inclined folk.

Mr. McGowan has the guts to stand up to this newest form of “McCarthyism”, which tries to prevent a real discussion of Jewish behaviour- especially in the area of covertness: the Neocons (mainly Jews) tricked the US into war with Iraq; they control US foreign policy via AIPAC; they have done so much spying (Rosenbergs, Pollard, Feith, etc.). Finally, the label of anti-Semitism prevents us from asking why so many of those who have been found guilty in these fraud cases are Jews (Spitzer, Nadel, Marcus Shrenker, Sonya Kohn, etc.)

It takes a brave person to question this group. Although not as tough as I would like, McGowan shows guts. Much better than any of those cowards and “kept-slaves” in the US Congress or Senate! Much Better!!!!!

And why is that? Because Palestine has been under ISRAELI rule. BUT – in Gaza and the West Bank since the return of Palestinian rule under the Oslo accords, the Christian population has been severely diminished.

RE acceptance of Jews in the Arab world. There was a short period during the Golden Age of Islam when much of the Muslim world embraced Jews. But after that Jews (and all infidels) were considered “dhimmis” and were not by any stretch of the imagination “equal”. They had to pay special “dhimmi” taxes for “protection”; their testimony against a Muslim was considered irrelevant; they had to lower their eyes when passing a Muslim etc. And BTW the “880,000 Jews who left the Arab world did not “leave” – they were expelled or forced about by violent attacks against them. Today, Jews are not tolerated in most parts of the Muslim world. There are some small communities of elderly Jews numbering a few hundred or a few thousand who have remained despite the discrimination.

BTW – this is an enlightening site for critics of the “Zionist entity” http://www.arabsforisrael.com/home.html. Read particularly the “Arab emails” section. These are people who live with Islam. They do not romanticize it like so many foolish Americans do.

In closing I would like to say thank you. Thank you to “Deadbeat”, “Bozh”, “Angry Peasant”, “Berg”, “Aarons” and all the other bigots who have contributed to this – you’ve written my lesson plans for me.

I appreciate the company. It is shameful that prof10 is poisoning young minds teaching them how to think, act, and behave as racists.

it is estimated that some 800, 000 arab jews have left arab world to emigrate to israel. so, this belies your assertion that arabs did not tolerate judaists or christian. today there are still christians in palestine. thnx

1. Jews established Jerusalem as their capital over 3000 years ago. With the exception of 100 years, it remained their capital for the next 1000 years. Even following the Roman expulsion of Jews in 70 AD, with the exception of historically brief periods when Jews were expelled by various rulers, there has ALWAYS been a Jewish presence in Palestine, most notably in Jerusalem. In 1800 Jews were 25% of the population of Jerusalem. By 1854 they were more than 50% of the population (with Muslims about 25% and Christians the remaining %). In contrast, Jerusalem was never a capital or even claimed to be holy for Muslims (except of course after the Jewish claim). In fact it is not even mentioned in the Koran and the period of Arab Muslim domination lasted for only 400 years after Mohammed conquered the area in 636.

2. By the Middle Ages Jerusalem had seriously deteriorated due to damage done by the Mongol Invasions after the end of the Crusader Kingdom; and the entire region of Palestine degenerated under the neglect of the Ottoman Pashas and Bedouin Raids. By the mid 1800′s the population of the Palestine region, which then numbered somewhere between 200,000 and 350,000, was seriously declining due to economic stagnation.

3. The MUSLIM population started to grow ONLY AFTER substantial Jewish immigration began in the 1880′s. Many of the Palestinians who claim “ancient” ties to Palestine were in fact Arabs from surrounding areas that were attracted to Palestine AFTER 1880 because of the jobs available in agricultural and industrial enterprises started by Jews. “Jewish resettlement restored the barren lands and drew to it Arabs from neighboring countries… (much of) the Arab population in recent decades was recent newcomers-either late immigrants or descendants of persons who had immigrated into Palestine in the previous seventy years.” Dr. Carl Herman Voss, 1953, chairman of the American Christian Palestine Committee.

4. Palestine is far from the only area where partition and or population transfers have taken place during the 20th century and where new countries with new populations have been established – most notably Pakistan and Bangladesh and the former Yugoslavia. But it is the only one that engenders a continuous and virulent hatred not only for a country (Israel) but for Judaism; and it is the only one against which so many wholeheartedly condone terrorism.

I have no doubt that the above information will be disputed by anti-Zionists, much as the Holocaust deniers claim that the Jews attacked Hitler first, Jews were paid for their slave labor, the gas chambers never gassed anyone and the “few” Jews who died in WW2 died from disease caused mostly by “imperialist” Allied bombing of Germany. As “Tree” quickly discovered when she quoted from the Nuremberg Trials to prove that Nazis used gas to exterminate Jews, there is an interesting mechanism that Holocaust deniers and anti-Zionists use – whenever there is evidence or testimony that contradicts their rhetoric, they simply call it a lie.

In any case, Aarons – who claims that “Jewish anti-Zionists” like him number in the “millions” (hardly likely since the world’s Jewish population is only about 18 million and this is a very minority viewpoint amongst Jews), shows his true colors when he (in lock step with Iran) calls Israel a Zionist “entity”, and fails to criticize Hamas not only for its violence against Israel, but for its violence against its own people.

Israel is the only Middle East country that provides freedom of religion and protection for all religions. It has also given the world Nobel Prize winners, technological inventions and medical advancements far in excess of what should be expected given its size and population. It is surrounded by Muslim nations which allow for little or no freedom of religion; which have enormous rates of illiteracy, which hang homosexuals, stone women who are raped and condone honor killings; and whose only lasting technological legacy will be the “invention” of suicide bombers.

Do I want Israel to be replaced by yet another Middle East country like that? Definitely not. If that makes me a “Zionist apologist”, then I’m proud to be one.

‘In closing I would like to say thank you. Thank you to “Deadbeat”, “Bozh”, “Angry Peasant”, “Berg”, “Aarons” and all the other bigots who have contributed to this – you’ve written my lesson plans for me.’

I have no intention of getting into any of the debates on this page that don’t relate to Zionism and the oppression of Palestinians, and take no responsibility for what those other people wrote. But, apparently, “prof10″ thinks it’s “antisemitic” to say “there are millions of Jews who criticize Zionism, and many of us do, in fact, consider Zionism to be a racist ideology and to be EXTREMELY racist in practice.” If that judgement is not enough in itself to invalidate his opinions, then consider his statement: “Then we have the charge that Israel stole Arab land – when in fact Israel got its land the same way the Arab nations got theirs – by a decision of the League of Nations made after the Allies defeated the Ottoman Empire which ruled all of the territory for 400 years prior to 1921.” Yes, the decisions of the imperialist League of Nations created the artificial borders of the Arab states, but Palestine was the ONLY place where they asserted that people who didn’t live there and hadn’t lived there had as much right to the place as the actual inhabitants did!

But the actual establishment of the Zionist entity was the result of pressure in the U.N. by a corrupt Harry Truman with the complicity of Stalin, followed by a brutal ethnic cleansing of not only the land unjustly allocated by the U.N. to the Zionists but any additional land that the well-armed Zionists could seize, much of it during “cease-fire” periods, just as the Zionists carried out land grabs and assassinations during the recent “cease fire” that Hamas rightly refused to extend.

http://www.comcast.net/data/fan/html/popup.html?v=978389199&pl=978378400.xml&plc=978378400&launchpoint=Cover&cid=fancover&attr=default_headline&config=/config/common/fan/default.xml

Ok, so what you are saying is that being Jewish is something that someone consciously chooses to do, like being a Nazi, or being a Satanist, or being a gangster. Since people have a choice in whether they are Jewish, Nazi, Satanist, criminal, etc., then there is nothing wrong with despising them for making that choice and that to be Anti-Jewish is not to be a Racist. Hatred of Jews is not Racism, it is just hatred of a disgusting, immoral, destructive lifestyle. Right?

I was put in place and ratified to establish an elite governance. It has nothing (not that you said it does) to do with democracy but how the elite would govern the original and expending empire.

The Delaration of Independence was a revolutionary document, which served a purpose – to mollify the masses, never meant to be used.

Most of what we are has been dominated by the “right of center” elite articulated and deeply rooted by the language and role of Alexander Hamilton. Jefferson had more “liberalish” leanings, but lived a life of an elite with a full staff of slaves.

There is little about US had that had a once upon a time that is not pretty much fiction. The DoI does provide a standard, but at this stage we are better off, starting all over. The DoI has proved itself no more than a screen for what really happens here so is pretty meaningless (it does provide a great deal of frustration and little more).

However don’t think we really know who the tail and dog are regarding Israel’s relationship with the US. It’s gotten so incestuous that its difficult to split a part. I think it was clearly the US that had the upper hand, but as of late, the door has been so opened that the AIPAC has made significant in roads in infiltrated the US government at the highest level and throughout the Congress.

I think the real tipping point was the collapse of the Soviet Union. During the bi-polar time period, Israel had a place within the US sphere of influence that was clearly mapped as a supporter against Soviet in roads to the ME and the energy reserves. But with the collapse, and the emergence of AIPAC Israel has pulled all the stoppers out because there is no “obvious threat/enemy”.

Zionism has always been about expansionism but the Soviet Union helped keep the lid on the ME (and else where). Once that went, well all bets were off and all hell has broken lose. Granted there was the ’67 war but again there was containment – after all the bi-polar operative word was containment. It’s just my sense of the unfolding of where we are.

Sorry, I should have been more clear. I was referring to the values laid out in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and especially the Bill of Rights.

The practice of the US government has certainly been antithetical to those values, especially in the last 60+ years. Part of the reason for this is that they are all Christians, which comes from Judaism and shares the evils of the original religion.

As for the relationship between Israel and the US, I think you have things backwards. It is Israel and the Jews who control the US and not the US that controls Israel. Potential Israeli PMs don’t have to meet with a US lobby group to get approval to run for office, but potential US presidential candidate must get vetted by AIPAC before they have any hope of running. Ron Paul refused and was either ridiculed or ignored by the Jewish controlled US media. He never had a chance because he refused to kowtow to Israel.

And Zisblatt even has her own website at: http://irenezisblatt.com There everyone can order her book. According to the website: “The last mementoes of her family were the four diamonds given to her by her mother, that she had to keep swallowing over and over so they wouldn’t be confiscated. She walked for two months on a death march while thousands of weakened prisoners dropped dead around her. Through it all, she held onto her hope and faith and, encouraged by the strength of her friend, Sabka, somehow she made it through one of humankind’s darkest eras.

Although she swore to tell the world of the atrocities she’d seen, to be a voice for her friends and fellow prisoners, it took her fifty years to get over her fear and shame before she could do so.”

You just can’t make up stuff like this, at least I can’t–but Jews seem to do it all the time.

Friedrich Paul Berg

Irene Zisblatt wrote a book about her wartime experiences including many months in Auschwitz entitled: “The Fifth Diamond: The Story of Irene Weisberg Zisblatt.” The book and story are described at: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/broward/cooper-davie-southwest/story/819285.html

“The only way Irene could keep the diamonds hidden was to swallow and retrieve them over and over again. She did this for 15 months.”

I will never look at diamonds the same way ever again. For that matter, I will never at a toilet or fesces the same way again either. Their might be diamonds down there.

And for you, Max Shields! Since we are not worthy of your responses, just go away and stay away.

What is in progress here is the kind of debate which America’s corrupt and Jew-dominated media and public institutions will not condone or allow. If the debate is removed from this site–it will continue elsewhere thanks to the miracle of the internet. Get used to it and try to learn something. I learn a lot every time I engage in these debates.