I wrote the following for the Huffington Post, to address the controversy about the statement I signed criticizing the Toronto International Film Festival for celebrating the city of Tel Aviv as part of Israel’s P.R. campaign to turn attention away from its battles with the Palestinians.

I recently signed a letter protesting the Toronto International Film Festival‘s decision to showcase and celebrate Tel Aviv. This in the very year when Gaza happened. The decision made the festival a participant in the newly launched campaign to “rebrand” Israel. Arye Mekel, the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s Director General for Cultural Affairs has said that artists and writers must be enlisted in order to “show Israel’s prettier face, so we are not thought of purely in the context of war.” The protestors felt it was wrong for the much-respected festival to be used in this manner. The role of art, after all, is not to prettify but to expose reality with all its contradictions and complexities.

I signed the letter without reading it carefully enough, without asking myself if some of the wording wouldn’t exacerbate the situation rather than bring about constructive dialogue.

Last week, Rabbi Shlomo Schwartz, director of the Chai Center in Los Angeles, explained to me the meaning of the Hebrew word “teshuva”– to fix things you have done incorrectly, not just by never doing them again but by “coming with a sincere heart. Words that come from the heart enter the heart.”

Some of the words in the protest letter did not come from my heart, words that are unnecessarily inflammatory: The simplistic depiction of Tel Aviv as a city “built on destroyed Palestinian villages,” for instance, and the omission of any mention of Hamas’s 8-month-long rocket and mortar attacks on the town of Sderot and the western Negev to which Israel was responding when it launched its war on Gaza. Many citizens now suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as a result. In the hyper-sensitized reality of the region in which any criticism of Israel is swiftly and often unfairly branded as anti-Semitic, it can become counterproductive to inflame rather than explain and this means to hear the narratives of both sides, to articulate the suffering on both sides, not just the Palestinians. By neglecting to do this the letter allowed good people to close their ears and their hearts.

Additionally, protesting the use of the festival to “rebrand” Israel was perhaps too easily misunderstood. It certainly has been wildly distorted. Contrary to the lies that have been circulated, the protest letter was not demonizing Israeli films and filmmakers. On one of the many trips I have made to Israel, I spoke at Tel Aviv University’s film department and am well aware, as I’m sure the other signatories are, that Israeli films are not a mouthpiece for their government’s policies. Nor was the letter an attack on the legitimacy of Tel Aviv as an Israeli city, or a call to boycott the Toronto Film Festival. In fact, many signatories are attending the festival and have films showing there.

As I said in my recent blog, the greatest “re-branding” of Israel would be to celebrate that country’s long standing, courageous and robust peace movement by helping to end the blockade of Gaza through negotiations with all parties to the conflict, and by stopping the expansion of West Bank settlements. That’s the way to show Israel’s commitment to peace, not a PR campaign. There will be no two-state solution unless this happens.

The Israeli-Palestinian story cannot be reduced to a simplistic aggressor-victim relationship. In order to fully understand this, one must be willing to come together with an open heart and really hear the narratives of both sides. One narrative sees 1948 as the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their land. Another sees it as the birth of a nation. Conceivably it was both. Neither narrative can be erased, both must be heard.

 So– I wake up this morning to a barrage of emails giving me a link to a web posting that has been widely picked up. It says that Rabbi Hier at the Simon Wiesenthal Center (he and I were friends—I thought) claims I support the destruction of Israel because I signed (along with many other artists, historians, including eight Israelis, mostly filmmakers) a petition protesting the Toronto International Film Festival’s decision to feature a celebratory “spotlight” on Tel Aviv. We understand that by doing this the festival has become, whether knowingly or not,  a participant in a cynical PR campaign to improve Israel’s image, make her appear less war-like. The Israeli Consul General said a year ago that Toronto would be the launch site of an extensive “Brand Israel” campaign. Artists and others of us who love Israel do not want art to be used to whitewash the tragedies committed against Palestinians, most recently in last winter’s terrible war in Gaza (1400 Palestinians dead, mostly civilians, many more wounded, and there are documented human rights violations) and the ongoing blockade of Gaza that is deepening a serious humanitarian crisis, wreaking havoc on the lives of innocent people, and preventing reconstruction in the aftermath of the attack.
The letter we signed did not —repeat: 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.

I have been to Israel many times. The first was in the early 1980s and it was love at first sight…for the country and for its people. I stayed in a Kibbutz with the great Israeli novelist, Amos Oz, and his family. I raised money for a senior center in Haifa, for a girl’s shelter in Jerusalem. I have spoken at the Hebrew University. I traveled into Lebanon with the Israeli army in 1981. I went deep into Russia in the  80s to secretly meet with Soviet Refusenik, Ida Nudel, after which I a national speaking tour in the U. S. to build support for letting Ida go to Israel where she now lives. In other words, I have been intimately involved with Israel over 3 decades. On almost every visit I also went into the West Bank, met with Palestinian artists, visited Palestinian refugee camps, drove through the Israeli settlements that encroach increasingly into Palestinian territory. I have seen suffering on both sides. It is out of love for Israel and all that it promised to be that I protest the use of art (which is meant to search for truth) in this branding campaign. The greatest “re-branding” of Israel would be to celebrate that country’s robust peace movement by allowing aid to be delivered to Gaza and stopping expansion of the settlements. That’s the way to show Israel’s commitment to peace, not a PR campaign. There will be no two-state solution unless this happens.