Help get this Israeli propaganda film out of the 2022 Doc Edge Film Festival!
“Dead Sea Guardians” – Film as propaganda
Israel has an international programme of propaganda to gain “legitimacy” and “normalise” its brutal oppression of Palestinians. Doc Edge has become part of this propaganda drive.
“Dead-Sea Guardians” – the one Israeli film the Israeli Embassy in New Zealand is sponsoring in the Doc Edge festival – claims to centre on a swim across the Dead Sea “from Jordan to Israel” but in fact is a swim “from Jordan to the Occupied Palestinian Territories”. (Kalia Beach, where the swim ends, is in the Occupied West Bank – part of the Occupied Palestinian Territories)
The Occupied Palestinian Territories were to be part of a Palestinian state but Israel has prevented this by building hundreds of illegal Jewish-only settlements across the area and brought in 600,000 Israeli settlers. Now they claim it is part of Israel.
The Aotearoa New Zealand government, and the entire international community, do not support Israeli claims to the Occupied West Bank but Doc Edge, who say they selected the film for the festival, is happy to promote the crude propaganda lie that this is part of Israel.
This film wants to literally “wipe Palestine from the map”
Can you imagine the outcry if a festival film wanted to “wipe Israel off the map”?
More background to the issue is here. And the call to boycott the festival from PSNA is here and from Palestinians in Aotearoa Co-ordinating Committee here is here
Take action now to have this film removed from the festival!
Please write to the festival board and organisers to have this film withdrawn:
Addresses are:
Dan Shanan dan@docedge.nz
Alex Lee alex@docedge.nz
Rachel Penman rachael@docedge.nz
Helen Clark helenclark.invites@gmail.com
Deborah Hart deb@debhart.co.nz
Glenn Johnstone Glenn@wxc.co.nz
Cameron McGregor admin@mgbca.co.nz
Palestinian human rights groups and PSNA have called for a boycott of the film festival by film producers and the public until official Israeli government financial support is withdrawn which will occur if the propaganda film they are promoting “Dead Sea Guardians” is withdrawn from the festival.
“The Occupied Palestinian Territories were to be part of a Palestinian state but Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, and expeditionary forces from Iraq prevented this by invading on May 15 1947”
FTFY John…
The film’s promo talks of three nations, Israel, Palestine, and Jordan.
I think joint artistic projects can be very enlightening and boycotts of this type of work are often censoring dissenting voices.
It’s also incredible they swam across the sea with their heads in the water. That’s extremely daring and dangerous.
Hilarious. The Friends of Epstein of the ‘Israel Institute of NZ’ are now claiming that the end of the swim, in the occupied West Bank, is part of Israel. There is no depth that these crooks will not stoop to.
https://twitter.com/IsraelInstNZ/status/1535539429288595456