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Shameful censorship

It is nothing new for countries - witness Israel and the Palestinians - to court and to seek to influence and shape public opinion.

All year round there are film festivals to be found everywhere the world. Like any other country, Israeli film-makers have been contributors to such festivals. But, it seems that directors of some festivals have bowed to pressure from pro-Palestinian groups or interests.

"In Europe, film festivals have become battlegrounds, with curators blatantly discriminating against artists and subjecting their work to Stalinist-style scrutiny. In Europe, a film such as The Substitute might battle to reach the screen simply because of its country of origin. And it's not only Israelis who ought to be worried.

In recent weeks, film festivals in Edinburgh, Dublin and Locarno (Switzerland) moved to cancel visits from Israeli directors. Meanwhile, Greece announced its withdrawal from the coming autumn film festival in Haifa, just as the Israeli city was suffering sustained rocket attacks from Hezbollah.

And at the documentary film festival under way in Lussas, France, plans for a special program on Israeli films were scrapped and replaced with a program of Palestinian and Lebanese films. Festival chiefs explained the decision on the basis it was "difficult to look at films from the countries involved in the current war with the same degree of detachment".

The moves were a response to pressure from pro-Palestinian groups, which used the war in Lebanon to push for a cultural boycott of the Jewish state. In an online petition launched in the war's last days, Palestinian artists urged the international community "to join us in the boycott of Israeli film festivals, Israeli public venues, and Israeli institutions supported by the Government, and to end all co-operation with these cultural and artistic institutions that to date have refused to take a stand against the Occupation (of the territories), the root cause for this colonial conflict".

So writes Julie Szego in an op-ed piece in The Age here.

This is a worry if even so-called open-minded and supposedly "artistic" directors of film festivals curb or restrict what is to be shown at their festivals. It is nothing more than blatant censorship - and if Szego is right even counter-productive.

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