Tribeca Festival apologises after backlash over red carpet joke about sexual assault of Palestinians
Organisers called the comments made during the premiere of The Wedding Entertainer 'offensive and unacceptable'.
The Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement took on New York’s Tribeca Festival on Thursday after the film festival received flak over racist, anti-Palestinian comments that were made at a red carpet event on Saturday.
In an Instagram post, the movement called Tribeca out on its “racist double standards” and “choice to continue programming complicit Israeli films during apartheid Israel’s ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza”.
BDS said the festival had barred Russian participation in the aftermath of the country’s invasion of Ukraine but failed to maintain the same principles when it came to Israel’s invasion of Gaza and its actions in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Lebanon, Iran and Syria.
In fact, the movement said, three Israeli films were platformed this year. One of the companies involved in these films, United King Films, was highlighted by the UN as “involved in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank”.
The comments that started the firestorm for Tribeca came from US comedian Elon Gold and influencer Lizzy Savetsky whose interaction on the red carpet of Gold’s film went viral for all the wrong reasons.
Gold spoke to Savetsky about his film, saying it was “a really big deal” for his Israel-made film to be screening at the Tribeca Festival. He then joked that he was “only raped by two Israeli dogs”, to which Savetsky countered, “I thought they only raped Palestinians.”
The festival later issued an apology saying the remarks were “offensive and unacceptable”.
“Sexual violence and human suffering should never be mocked or minimised,” the statement read. It said the remarks “do not reflect the Tribeca Festival’s values” and the organising team regrets “the hurt they have caused”.
BDS objected to the statement not mentioning the anti-Palestinian nature of the comments and not cancelling subsequent screenings of Gold’s film. The movement said this “erasure of Palestinians” and the lack of Palestinian representation at the festival were “examples of Tribeca’s systemic anti-Palestinian racism”.
The post from BDS said film festivals were “no place for genocidal Israeli propaganda”.
“There can be no celebration of independent film, free expression or solidarity without ending complicity,” the movement said.