Ken Loach is a famous filmmaker who's made some excellent films. He's also a bigot. It seems he hates Jews.
A number of years ago, he officially came out support in a worldwide boycott of everything related to Israel. The movement began to fizzle when Jews were banished from achedemic confrences because of their ethnicity/religion earlier in this decade. No one thought much about it. However the problem of the oppression of individual Jews by Loach and his friends has recently resurfaced.
Tali Shalom Ezer is a feminist filmmaker living in Tel Aviv who recently made a film called "Surrogate." which is a poor sap with sexual hangups. It's won some awards and has been acclaimed in a number of festivals and was invited to the Edinburgh film festival next month. The Israeli government was proud of it's new favorite daughter, and wanted to help her get all the way to Scotland, so they gave a grant to the festival of £300.
Then Ken Loach got wind of what was going on and the supporters of Hamas and Iran went apeshit. There were protests and then Loach issued the following statement:
“The massacres and state terrorism in Gaza make this money unacceptable,” he said. “With regret, I must urge all who might consider visiting the festival to show their support for the Palestinian nation and stay away.”
Think of it, a JEW has a film in the Edinburgh film festival! The horror!!!
So, showing genuine "courage," The festival gave Israel back the money. The Times of London put it this way:
In a statement the festival said it accepted that Loach spoke “on behalf of the film community, therefore we will be returning the funding issued by the Israeli Embassy”.
Now it was the turn of the British Jewish community to go apeshit. Many filmmakers have denouced Loach and it's becoming quite clear that he doesn't represent anyone but himself.
The Festival is trying to backtrack, a spokesman for the EIFF said that the festival itself would fund Ms. Shalom Ezer’s travel to Edinburgh out of its own budget. It's strange that if it is going to go along with the Worldwide boycott of Israel and Judaism, it would not have permitted Ms. Shalom Ezer's film to remain in the festival at all.
Trying to punish someone, as Loach was trying to do, because of their race or ethnicity is clearly bigotry, and bigotry against Jews is antisemitism.
UPDATE (sort of) here are a couple of "footnotes:"
the latest on the controversy.
Evidence Loach is an antisemite.
Comments are closed on this story.