Antisemitic Mob Rule in Canada

"After receiving numerous security and safety related emails, phone calls, and social media messages, the Playhouse Cinema reached a difficult decision to postpone the Hamilton Jewish Federation's venue rental."

"The Playhouse Cinema's mission is to be a welcome home to a variety of cultural groups, serving the Hamilton area through our film programming."

Playhouse Cinema, Hamilton, Ontario

 

"In withdrawing its support of a Jewish film festival based on outrageous claims by a few individuals that any film produced in Israel is a form of 'Zionist propaganda', the Playhouse Cinema is prioritizing the will of antisemites over an apolitical cultural festival that stands for artistic excellence and integration."

"The Hamilton Jewish Federation rejects this attempt to sever Jewish from Israeli identity at a time when fifty percent of the world's Jewish population resides in Israel and to categorize Jews into 'acceptable' and 'unacceptable."

Hamilton Jewish Federation

 

"This shameful attempt to silence the voice, representation and lived experiences of the Jewish community is divisive, it is dangerous and it is blatant antisemitism."

"Enough."

Union leader Joseph Mancinello, Canadian director of the Labourers' International Union of North America

 

After signing a contract with the Hamilton Jewish Federation agreeing to host a Jewish film festival, the Playhouse Cinema in Hamilton, slated to host the festival from April 7 to 9, declared itself unable to fulfill its contractual obligation. Citing "security and safety concerns at this particularly sensitive moment", the Federation has been left at a last-minute juncture in its cultural film showing, to find a replacement venue.

Six films were to have been featured. They were produced in France, Poland and Israel; their aim to represent "the contemporary Jewish experience", as explained by a news release by the annual festival's organizers. Diverse topics from Holocaust denial to an Arab-owned hair salon in Haifa, were to be shown through the films. A commemorative screening of a film by director Yahav Winnter, murdered on October 7 by Hamas terrorists while trying to protect his wife and newborn daughter at a kibbutz was to have been featured.

According to the company behind the theatre, it was faced in an awkward position, contrary to its artistic mandate, when a growing backlash led it to reach "a difficult decision". In response, the Hamilton Jewish Federation announced on its website its intention to announce a new time and location for the festival to proceed. Hope Without Boundaries which features an Israeli field hospital serving Ukrainian patients in the wake of the Russian invasion is one feature film.

Another, Children of Nobody, reflects issues surrounding troubled youth on the margins of Israeli society. Local Conservative Member of Parliament Dan Buys speak of the situation as "quite simply antisemitic. All the more reason for the Film Festival to go on, bigger and better when re-scheduled", wrote the representative for Flamborough-Glanbrook.

 

Protestors attend a march in support of Gaza through downtown Hamilton, Ont., on Sunday, Oct. 15, 2023. Photo by Peter Power /THE CANADIAN PRESS

The deputy leader of the federal Conservative Party, Melissa Lantsman, spoke of "the new normal politicians are appeasing", urging Canadians to "wake up" and stand in support of the Jewish community. While the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs deplored the decision by the Playhouse Cinema to bow "to mob rule", failing to stand courageously against antisemitism's bleak, destructive force.

"What a small Hamilton theatre has experienced is a fraction of what our community has experienced over the past five months. When the theatre received some threatening phone calls and letters over renting their venue to the Hamilton Jewish Federation for a Jewish cultural film festival, instead of standing up to the hate, they caved to it."

"We're angered and disgusted by the whole situation. It's a sad day for Canadian values, the arts and for the people of Hamilton."

Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs

• Hope without Boundaries (Israel 2023): an Israeli field hospital is set up amidst the war in Ukraine.

• March 1968 (Poland 2022): two students fall in love in communist Poland but politics soon catches up with them.

• Women in Sink (Israel 2015): the documentary's director works in a salon and hears from clients what it's like to live in a Christian Arab community in Israel.

• Children of Nobody (Israel 2022): a group of boys band together to save their shelter on Tel Aviv's outskirts.

• The Boy (Israel 2023): a father and son live in a Kibbutz bordering the Gaza strip where they experience rockets and conflict with each other. The film's director, Yahav Winner, was killed in the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas.

• The Man in the Basement (France 2021): a couple sells their apartment to a man who appears to be trustworthy but is actually a Holocaust denier.

The Playhouse Cinema in downtown Hamilton's east end will no longer be hosting an annual Jewish film festival. (The Playhouse Cinema/Doors Open Hamilton)