In its decade-long run, Tel Aviv’s LGBT Film Festival (TLVFest) has never before been hit with such pressure from the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign targetting Israel in support of Palestine. Now, nearly half of its international guests have pulled out from taking part.
Even TLVFest’s director, Yair Hochner, admitted the same, telling the Jerusalem Post: “I think they just did a very good job this year, the pinkwashing people, as they call themselves.”
The BDS campaign was launched by hundreds of Palestinian civil society groups in 2005 in a bid to isolate Israel internationally to defeat its occupation of Palestine and its apartheid policies.
The boycott efforts have been spearheaded by Pinkwashing Israel, which says the TLVFest “promotes the cynical use of gay rights — known as pinkwashing — to distract from and normalize Israeli occupation, settler colonialism and apartheid.”
Read the full article at Green Left Weekly.