Thursday 21 May 2009











Thursday, 21st May 2009

The Edinburgh Bigotry Festival

12:14am


We know there are left-wing bigots who hate Israel and tell defamatory lies about its behaviour. What is much more troubling is the way in which others go along with this, to the extent of trampling down fundamental liberties.

The film-maker Ken Loach is well known for his extreme hostility to Israel. Tali Shalom Ezer, a graduate of Tel Aviv University, was due to go to the Edinburgh International Film Festival for a screening of her film, Surrogate. Her film has nothing to do with politics. It is a romance set in a sex-therapy clinic. Yet simply because she was Israeli, and had received a grant of £300 from the Israel embassy to enable her to travel to Scotland, Loach said the Festival should be boycotted on account of ‘the massacres and state terrorism in Gaza’.

This was clearly appalling...

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