Yossi Schwartz ISL (RCIT section in Israel/Occupied Palestine) 13.05.2025
Today, “Israel Today” newspaper is reporting:
“Against the backdrop of the Cannes Film Festival, which kicks off today (Tuesday) in the French Riviera city, hundreds of international artists and filmmakers, some of them Israelis, signed a letter condemning the killing of Gazan photojournalist Fatma Hasuna, who was killed in an Israeli air force bombing. Hasuna, 25, was the protagonist of the documentary “Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk,” a French- and English-speaking Palestinian-French-Iranian production that deals with life in Gaza during the war. and will be screened at the festival.
Among the prominent names who signed the letter are actors and actresses Marc Raffaello, Guy Pearce, Ralph Pines, Viggo Mortensen, Melissa Brera, Cynthia Nixon, Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon, and Javier Bardem, as well as the directors David Cronenberg, Alfonso Cuarón, Yorgos Lanthimos, Pedro Almodóvar, Mike Lee, and Avi Mugrabi, Eyal Sivan and Nadav Lapid.
Below is most of the letter
“Fatma Hasuna was 25 years old, a Palestinian photojournalist who was targeted by the Israeli army on April 15, 2025, the day after it was announced that the film ‘Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk,’ in which she starred, had been selected to participate in the Cannes Film Festival. She was about to get married. Ten of her relatives, including her sister, who was pregnant, were killed by the same bomb.
Since the horrific massacre of October 7, 2023, foreign journalists have not been allowed to enter the Gaza Strip. The Israeli army is targeting civilians. More than 200 journalists were deliberately killed. Writers, filmmakers, and artists are brutally murdered.
“At the end of March, Palestinian filmmaker Hamdan Bilal, who won an Academy Award for his film ‘No Other Land,’ was brutally attacked by Israeli settlers and then abducted by the army, before being released as a result of international pressure. The Academy Academy’s lack of support for Hamdan Bilal sparked outrage among its members, and she was forced to apologize for it. We are ashamed of this passivity. Why does cinema, a fertile ground for social creation, seem to remain indifferent to the horror of reality and the oppression that our brothers and sisters experience?
“As artists, we must not remain silent in the face of the genocide that is taking place in Gaza. What is the essence of our profession, if we don’t learn a lesson from history and make films that are committed to it, if we don’t protect the voices that are silenced?”[i]
The movement to boycott the Zionist economy and even culture is growing daily. The monopoly of the reactionary Zionist ideology has broken down as many Jews and even Israelis outside of Israel participate in the pro-Palestinian movement.
Israel out of Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria!
One democratic state for Jews and Palestinians, including refugees!
Endnotes:
[i] https://www.israelhayom.co.il/culture/films/article/17945902