Media release – Friends of Palestine Tasmania, 11 November 2024
Apartheid Free Arts Campaign Launched today
Friends of Palestine Tasmania today launched its community campaign to keep Hobart’s cinema and arts world apartheid-free.
“Our goal is to make the Jewish International Film Festival apartheid-free by 2025,” said Friends of Palestine Tasmania spokesperson Peta Fitzgibbon today.
“People in Hobart believe apartheid and racial segregation have no place in cinema and the arts in Australia in the twenty first century,” Ms Fitzgibbon said.
“We are calling on the Festival Directors to reject sponsorship from any entity that participates in the illegal colonisation and occupation of Palestinian territory.”
“This year’s festival has as one of its principal sponsors the Jewish National Fund of Australia. The best-selling writer, physician and expert on trauma, Gabor Maté, who features in the festival film Physician, Heal Thyself, has publicly condemned the Jewish National Fund as ‘criminal, colonial and racist’.”
In an interview earlier this year in Canada, Dr Maté said of the Jewish National Fund: “It is criminal, it is colonial and it’s racist. I’m not making moral statements here, I’m speaking in the very objective sense of those words. The so-called absentee property – the property of Palestinians who had been expelled from their land and houses – was sold by the state of Israel to the JNF for resale. The JNF is a criminal organisation, it receives stolen goods.”
Ms Fitzgibbon pointed out that the International Court of Justice issued a historic ruling on 19 July this year that Israel’s colonization and occupation of Palestinian territory is unlawful.
“Israel’s discriminatory laws and policies against Palestinians violate the prohibition on apartheid and racial segregation, and Israel’s occupation must end now. Sanctions may be imposed on Israeli entities that violate the ruling. The Jewish National Fund is complicit in apartheid, racial segregation, occupation and colonisation – its affiliates ought to have no place in Australia’s art scene,” said Ms Fitzgibbon.
Friends of Palestine Tasmania encourage people to watch the festival film featuring Gabor Maté, Physician, Heal Thyself, screening at the State Cinema, 18:15, Monday 11 November.
