French transgender movie canceled because Israel looks good in it

Apparently, you no longer have to be Jewish or Israeli to have your film attacked by Jew-haters. If you dare to make Israel look good, that’s enough to get you canceled.

We can thank an international film festival in Belgium for this latest outrage in the global march for secession of the Jewish state. The festival, which has been held in Brussels for 30 years and has shown films from the Mediterranean, Europe, Africa and the Middle East, announced last week that it was canceling the screening of the documentary “The Beauty of Gaza”.

The French documentary tells the story of a young Palestinian transgender woman who flees Gaza on foot after her life is threatened because of her gender identity, and arrives in Tel Aviv to live freely and articulate her identity.

So why would the festival cancel such a human-centric film?

Why else? Because it came under pressure from pro-Palestinian groups who protested that the film “contributes to the erasure and colonization narrative of genocide,” a view the festival said it did not share. Of course, but that didn’t stop them from canceling the show.

The film, which is not Israeli and was only partially shot in Israel, committed the unforgivable sin of portraying Palestinian society as anti-LBGTQ and Israeli society as the complete opposite. In other words, it showed the truth. Even the French director of the film, Yolanda Zauberman, admitted in an interview with Haaretz: “I made this film not to show that trans people are treated better in Israel, but it is a fact.”

Another fact: the decision to cancel was made only a few hours before the scheduled screening. Due to the fact that activists threatened to boycott the event and disrupt it, the festival management decided to cancel the screening “to ensure the smooth operation of the festival.”

This is not a protest, this is intimidation.

Hysterical Jew-haters and Zionophobes all over the world will continue to bully and intimidate the authorities until the authorities have the courage to say nothing more. It’s bad enough when haters single out Jewish and Israeli authors, scholars, and artists for boycotts. But when they start harassing a French director for daring to show a truth they don’t like, you know we’ve entered new territory.

Such radical intolerance becomes a war not only against Jews, but also against artistic expression. Let’s hope the Tel Aviv-based “Beauty” from Gaza will stand up for creative freedom – even if it makes Israel look good.