By Iqbal Jassat

Bravo to Sarah Friedland’s courage and honesty for using her acceptance speech at the Venice Film Festival to voice her support for Palestinians facing what she accurately described as Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

During her speech, Friedland, winner of the Debut Film award and Horizons Best Director for ‘Familiar Touch’, also condemned Israel’s 76 years of occupation.

She added that film workers have a responsibility to use institutional platforms to address Israel’s impunity on the global stage and concluded her speech by affirming her “solidarity with the people of Palestine in their struggle for liberation”.

By highlighting Gaza’s plight, Friedland joins a growing number of Jewish artists, academics, historians and activists, who have taken a bold stance in defence of Palestinian rights.

Many have risked threats to their careers and professions, while many more have been ostracised and slandered as “self-hating Jews”. In South Africa, we are aware of the relentless attacks on Ronnie Kasrils by the Zionist establishment.

Neither Judge Richard Goldstone (remember the Bar Mitzva scandal) nor cartoonist Jonathan Shapiro were spared by Israel’s pro-Apartheid lobby groups.

As expected, Friedland has come under fire with abuse and insults hurled at her.

Outrageous allegations have emerged to besmirch her character and integrity.

Ynetnews.com, a pro-Israel mouthpiece, has published a scathing open letter addressed to her. In it, she and her “progressive friends” are accused of becoming “the propaganda mechanism of Hamas”.

The vitriol directed against her seeks to dismiss her bravery by implying that she has no agency of her own:

“No, Sarah Friedland, you are not brave. You are part of the herd mentality. It’s fashion. It’s tradition. You have no idea what you’re talking about”.

It doesn’t end there. Ynet author’s Islamophobia then takes centre stage when Friedland is challenged to “instead” fight “radical Islam”. And not surprisingly, he unleashes his hatred of Hamas by deliberately distorting it as carrying out genocide against “anyone it considers an infidel”.

Is Sarah Friedman a pushover? Will she be intimidated by Zionist pressure to turn her gaze away from the slaughter of Palestinians in Israel’s genocide in Gaza? Will she succumb to threats and start singing praises of Israel’s Occupation Forces (IOF) as the “most moral army” in the world?

Not at all. Her bio-data in her own words is an affirmation of her strength and conviction – not that of a pushover!

“I am a filmmaker and artist rooted in creative non-fiction. I am also an educator and the Director of the MDOCS Storytellers’ Institute (the best job in the world).

“Operating on a firm belief that reality has been messed with since people started telling stories and writing histories, my work is rooted in non-fiction but often uses the vocabularies of speculative fiction and fantasy to tweak and re-imagine reality.

“I want my work to be a tool that opens hearts and minds to a more equitable world, and I believe that the best way to do that is by making work that not only challenges conservative thought and values, but also uses experimental and playful language to challenge the way information is received.

“I see this as a political and playful act that simultaneously reclaims power from both dominant narratives and dominant modes of storytelling to make way for something different.”

However, having touched a raw Zionist nerve, it is a given that Friedland will be subject to harassment at the hands of Israel’s vindictive agents.

Perhaps her vulnerability may lie in the fact that her works have been supported by grants and fellowships from a number of foundations. In other words, these foundations which include the Jerome Foundation, the Paul Newman Foundation and the Ford Foundation, will likely face pressure to halt her grants.

Raz Segal, an associate professor of Holocaust and genocide studies and an endowed professor in the study of modern genocide at Stockton University, wrote an extensive article in The Forward titled “Accusing Israel of genocide cost me a job…”.

His summation of genocide as the culmination of a process that turns the world upside down – that frames defenceless people as dangerous enemies; violent states as innocent societies threatened by blind hatred and fanaticism; and lies as truth, brilliantly captures the sentiments of many Jewish opponents of Israel.

The power of Friedland’s message of disgust at Israel’s barbarism will resonate among Palestinians as indeed among the overwhelming majority of the world.

* Iqbal Jassat is an Executive Member of the South Africa-based Media Review Network.

** He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle