This opinion was prompted by an email I received from the Wiesenthal Center about an article which they saw in alJezeera Magazine entitled "Jane Fonda Joins Boycott of Toronto Film Festival over Homage to Israel" See link below.

Jane Fonda and the Left's Error -- Its Case Against Israel: An article appeared in alJezeera Magazine entitled Jane Fonda Joins Boycott of Toronto Film Festival over Homage to Israel. The article states in pertinent part “… a letter [sent by Fonda and other artists] aimed at festival officials claims that Tel Aviv was built on violence, ignoring the suffering of thousands of former residents and descendants.” Fonda, therefore, joined a growing list of artists boycotting the festival.

Of course, no one mentions that the Jewish State emerged out of the 1948 UN mandate made because of Europe’s problem of left over suffering Jewish refugees of the Holocaust with its attendant wholesale slaughter of the six million. Nor does it mention that Jews had, for millennia, been a part of that land. Jane Fonda has gone back to being a jerk, as she joins this bleating segment of the herd without, yet again, thinking through her actions. Further, the Jewish artists who come out against Israel are shooting themselves in their own foot.

Some on the left and I part ways when it comes to Israel. I cannot, hard as I may try, understand how they would want to defend those who want to destroy the tiny state by force or by a ONE-state solution which also threatens the Jewish state AND by extension the Jewish people period. It is unacceptable.

A comparison of cultures makes crystal clear that the tyranny existing in the Arab world is staggering. Women are whipped, beaten and sometimes killed for the most minor "offenses." They are flogged because they wear pants, threatened or tortured if they go to school. They are stoned, sometimes to death, if God forbid they sleep with someone before marriage or with another other than their husband or even if they deny their husband sex. Homosexuals are killed or tortured in many of those lands in the most bestial ways. The atrocities abound as they do in Gaza itself and even between their own people. Women are treated horrifically in nearly every Arab country and Persian one as well. I cannot be blind to what my eyes see. Israel for all of its faults (and it is not without them) is an infinitely freer state. It fights to survive every single day as Jews have done throughout centuries.

Moreover, I hear nary a sound from segments of the left against the plethora of attacks committed by Islamic fundamentalists collectively against hundreds of thousands of innocents. We must bring REALITY back to planet earth and state what really IS as your eyes see it while not abandoning the many other humane and principled issues about which the left is concerned.

Israel is more advanced, freer and more democratic than any state in that mentally unhinged neck of the woods! I am not afraid to criticize Israel at times when it is not perfect but I do not know of a perfect place on earth. Do you?


See link below sent by the Wiesenthal Center: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/articles/34/Jane_Fonda_Joins_Boycott_of_Toronto_Film_Festival_.html