In a blog post published Thursday an official at the Jewish Community Center in Manhattan wrote that “the importance of the use of boycott” to pressure “Israel to end the occupation is unquestionable”— as long as it’s not his film festival being boycotted.
Isaac Zablocki, Director of Film Programs at the JCC in Manhattan, and Executive Director of The Other Film Festival, which claims on its website to be “a vehicle for cultural change and social insights into the nature of Israel as a democracy and the complex condition of the lives of its minorities that are living in the Jewish Sate (sic),”published the article on the Huffington Post.
“In the case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, nonviolence is a welcome form of protest for the region, and the importance of the use of boycott to get international attention towards pressuring Israel to end the occupation is unquestionable,” he asserted.
Zablocki objects however to applying the anti-Israel boycott to “art, culture and education” saying it “brings up dangers in the realm of freedom and evolution of thought.”
According to Zablocki, who fails to distinguish further between what, in his opinion, should and shouldn’t be exempt from boycott, “Some messages can positively impact our world, and should not be thrown out because of a blanket boycott. Israel needs to see films made by Palestinians. Palestinians need to see films by Israelis. Otherwise, both sides will remain with only their own narrative and never truly see the humanity of the other side.”
“The BDS movement fights against the normalization of the occupation of the State of Israel and pushes to exclude Israel from any international program as long as it is violating the human rights of Palestinians,” wrote Zablocki further.
Last year, one of the most vehement proponents of anti-Israel activism Professor Norman Finkelstein made clear in an interview that the BDS movement counts the destruction of Israel among its objectives by advocating for the right of return for Palestinian refugees.