The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) is having a spotlight on cities by hosting a City to City component. This year, its first, TIFF is spotlighting Tel Aviv. While Cameron Bailey, the festival’s co-director in his first year at TIFF, is a well-known and-respected personality, he seems to have made a serious faux pas.

It is well and good to think of Tel Aviv in a vacuum – as just another city in this modern, hectic, and mondo-cool, world, he and his “team” at TIFF have conveniently forgotten the plight of the Palestanian people in that city. Moreover, they seem to think that separating Tel Aviv from Israel would separate the oppressive state from its oppressive tactics and practices.

I’m not much of a TIFF person and never have been. I lined up once about twenty years ago and thought I would never like to do it again. I’ve received a few free tickets over the years and have loved to see the films screened on those occasions. I’m saying TIFF has never been a priority for me.

I do have friends who take their vacation most years around the festival. They not only love film, they love TIFF. There are many TIFF junkies and I hold them no ill-will for their addiction. I have my own, why shouldn’t they have theirs?

Those are the very people I wonder about. If there are TIFF-lovers who also care about the Palestinian people, as well as justice for people everywhere, I wonder what they are going through. I hope they make decisions they can live with. I hope they do because people are still dying – in Palestine and so many other places.

John Greyson withdrew his film Covered from the festival and sent the organisers a well-publicised letter. Thousands of other joined him and signed that letter in a document calld The Toronto Declaration (full text and signatories here). Film makers, artists, actors, writers, academics, activists, workers, unemployed people, and every other kind of human being signed the document and expressed solidarity with its philosophy.

In tonight’s presentation and discussion, many of the public figures sent video, audio and written greetings, support, and testimony. Some of the supporters of the Toronto Declaration are listed on the site:

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 Velcrow 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, Danny Glover, and Naomi Klein, and despite an aggressive campaign of misinformation regarding the letter’s content.

Support for the Toronto Declaration continues to grow. Being at the meeting showed the greater support for the Declaration than those who vitriolically oppose it by sending their agents to provoke a peaceful discussion.

I thank the dissenters, because they only deepened and stiffened my resolve: I am now, and will remain, in solidarity with the Palestinian people!