Placing colonized and colonizers on an equal footing
Bulletin N°64 2026 The Marseille International Film Festival (FID Marseille) takes place every year in July. This year, for its 37th edition , the organizers decided to invite filmmakers from Palestine and the Arab world. They had also decided to invite Nadav Lapid, an "Israeli" filmmaker. At first glance, Nadav Lapid appears "respectable," denouncing, in a way, the toxic ideological atmosphere prevailing in the Zionist colonial state. But he is funded by official organizations of the Zionist colonial entity and participates in many of the cultural exhibitions organized under its patronage. Therefore, at the beginning of June, upon learning of Nadav Lapid's participation, twelve filmmakers wrote to the FID management requesting that their films be withdrawn from the program. Here is an excerpt from their letter clearly explaining their reasons: “ The festival has chosen to dedicate a significant portion of its programming to Palestine and the Arab world, in a context marked by nearly three years of genocide in Gaza, the continued colonization of Palestine, the scorched-earth policy in Lebanon, and the occupation of new territories in Syria. It is in this context that we reject the insistence of festivals on creating a symmetry, in their invitations and programming, between Palestinian and Israeli productions. The FID management refused to listen, citing a lack of time, to the arguments of invited filmmakers, producers, and speakers. A program embodies a worldview; it is a political act, whether it explicitly acknowledges it or not. Palestinian narratives, archives of Arab struggles, and the memory of colonized peoples cannot be mobilized as mere signs of openness that feed a self-righteous conscience.” Political courage is not measured by the number of films shown, but by the ability to acknowledge power dynamics. It is in the name of this responsibility that we have mobilized and that we will continue to reject all forms of normalization that equate the colonized with the colonizers .
Nadav Lapid therefore decided to withdraw from the festival, but in his withdrawal letter, he used the term " intimidation tactic ," claiming he was being " reduced to his mere nationality ." This false argument—that he was being boycotted simply because he is a citizen of the Zionist colonial entity—is strikingly similar to the Zionists' equating denunciation of their illegitimate and criminal colonial state with antisemitism. Nevertheless, this withdrawal provoked very strong reactions, triggering a rather exceptional outcry from a certain segment of the French and international art-house film community. Le Monde and the politically correct left offered their scathing criticisms. These individuals thus demonstrated their incomprehension, or rather their refusal to understand, the colonial question in Palestine, and in general. As the filmmakers wrote in their letter to FID Marseille: “ Placing Palestinian and Israeli narratives side by side in the same representational space, as if they were strictly equivalent, erases the power relations, the history, and the material conditions from which these narratives emerge. This parallel asserts a false equality of position. ”
For decades, European cultural institutions have taken it upon themselves to create spaces for dialogue between Palestinians and Israelis, in the name of coexistence and mutual understanding. Presented as artistic initiatives, these encounters merely wash away the bloodshed and do not challenge the colonial relationship. Since then, generations of Palestinian and Arab filmmakers have resisted these mechanisms established by the 1995 Barcelona Process. The Zionist colonial state has for years pursued an international image strategy; "Brand Israel" mobilizes culture as a communication tool. Funding dissenting voices is part of this strategy: enabling critical filmmakers to circulate within European cultural spaces in order to maintain the image of a vibrant democracy, as long as these voices do not challenge the Zionist project itself.
When the oppressed refuse to share a space with the representative of an oppressive state, the oppressor is often portrayed as a victim of censorship. This role reversal is not accidental but serves to discredit resistance to normalization. Once again, the debate shifts from Palestine to freedom of expression, and Palestinians are forced to justify their refusal instead of being heard.
In France, Palestinian voices and acts of solidarity with a free Palestine have always been subjected to violent and ever-increasing repression: accusations of glorifying terrorism, prosecutions, bans on demonstrations, and media and cultural marginalization. At the same time, artists from the Zionist colonial entity who are critical of their society have benefited from considerable visibility. This is part of the strategy of French imperialism: to give a voice to "critics" of Zionist society, most often limited to its "far-right" government, or, like Lapid, to dwell on the moral state of Zionist colonial society by pitying those who doubt, but without ever mentioning the plight of the colonized. And all this while silencing, as much as possible, the voices of the colonized denouncing the genocide. French cultural institutions regularly decide who can speak about Palestine, and from what position. This is a colonialist attitude. Here we have a perfect snapshot of the vision of the majority of the "left," political or cultural, in France, who believe they know better than the colonized peoples what is good for them, and this can go so far as to prohibit or limit their voices, while promoting those of Western imperialists. The filmmakers conclude their text with this sentence: " Today, our priority is not to produce images of coexistence, but to act against an approved colonial and genocidal reality."
Cultural boycotts are the most concrete tool for solidarity .
The meaning of the boycott
Co-production funding with the Israel Film Fund [1] , submission to the Ophir Awards, the Israeli equivalent of the César Awards (whose winner automatically represents the Zionist colonial entity at the Oscars), participation in the Paris Israeli Film Festival, an event supported by the Israeli embassy in France… Several elements related to the production and promotion of his latest film, Yes , are now catching up with Nadav Lapid and explaining the stance of several filmmakers and activist groups in France, including Palestine Will Save Cinema , which has been leading a vital campaign for several months in favor of a cultural boycott, entitled “ No Cinema Without a Boycott .” In a text written in response to the various op-eds supporting the Zionist filmmaker, the group reiterated the crucial fact for understanding the situation: “ By continuing to collaborate with Israeli institutions (even though he has no need to), Nadav Lapid is participating in a key showcase of the normalization strategy pursued by the Israeli state ,” which notably involves using certain dissenting voices as democratic guarantors internationally.
What the "cultural left" is doing is challenging the boycott by distorting its reasons and objectives in order to prevent the emergence of the real divide between those who question the existence of the Zionist colonial entity and those who accept it. This divide is very visible in the state repression in France, which targets only the former. Moreover, the management of the FID Marseille festival refused the proposal from the association " Palestine Will Save Cinema" to organize a debate entitled " Why Boycott Culture? ", which would have been developed with the festival staff and open to both professionals and the public. The controversy within this same "cultural left" was presented on June 6, 2026, by one of the official channels of French imperialism, Le Monde , as a clash between proponents of dialogue and advocates of threats and censorship; worse, as a campaign waged against a filmmaker from the Zionist colonial entity simply because of his nationality.
This is why it is important to reiterate the basis of a cultural boycott. A cultural boycott is not censorship, but the expression of a political refusal. Censorship comes from a power that prohibits; a boycott comes from a population that refuses. A boycott does not confiscate an artist's voice, does not destroy, does not silence: it challenges the institutional conditions under which that voice is funded, promoted, or used. And Nadav Lapid is not targeted because of his nationality; the cultural boycott does not target artists because of their nationality or their personal opinions. What is at stake here is the reality of its integration into the institutional and political mechanisms of the Israeli state. Reducing this issue to an attack against an individual thus allows us, once again, to evade the real issue concerning the institutions, funding, and mechanisms of cultural representation linked to a state, and the relationships and role that filmmakers maintain within them. Cultural boycotts exist not because artists are responsible for crimes committed by their government, nor because certain works should be banned, but because cultural institutions, funding systems and dissemination policies play a concrete role in the legitimizing strategies of states.
This debate is currently sweeping through the French film industry and should not be about the right to create or screen films, because that is not what this is about. It concerns the responsibility of filmmakers and cultural institutions in the face of the boycott called for by the Palestinian people and their Resistance, and also our collective capacity to denounce the links between culture, funding, and power. The question is whether cultural institutions and those who benefit from these institutions—in this case, filmmakers—can continue to operate as if nothing is amiss when genocide and colonial policies carried out with impunity by the Zionist colonial state are documented daily, and when calls to break with the mechanisms of normalization of this state are multiplying worldwide.
The cultural boycott addresses precisely this question. Not through censorship, but through a rejection of normalization. Not against artists because of their nationality, but against the institutions and mechanisms that contribute to making acceptable what should not be. The film industry refuses to engage in this political debate when a controversy, spreading like wildfire, substitutes the question of nationality for that of institutions.
In conclusion
The same is true of "left-wing" cultural circles as of political circles. For the most part, they refuse to properly analyze the colonial situation in Palestine. And the reason is simple: they are indelibly marked by the ideological legacy of colonization, French imperialism, and Voltaire's "Enlightenment." These same people denigrate Hamas or the armed resistance, telling Palestinians who should organize the resistance and how. These same people also speak of peace, not of the national liberation of Palestine. They speak of a "two-state solution," which de facto allows for the continuation of colonization. Finally, these are the same people who try to sell us left-wing Zionists, when the Supreme Court of the Zionist colonial state, the very heart of the opposition to Netanyahu, has just rejected Dr. Hossam Abu Safiya's appeal and ordered the continuation of his illegal detention, all the while knowing that he is being held in appalling conditions and subjected to regular torture.
The weight of ideological colonialism in France, which influences both the "left" and the "right" in different ways, explains why the solidarity movement for the liberation of Palestine is much weaker in France than in neighboring Italy, Spain, Belgium, or the United Kingdom. The Nadav Lapid case is just one more example demonstrating this weight.
The Palestinian and Lebanese resistance fighters are battling the same enemy that oppresses us: Western imperialism. Their victory would be a powerful signal for our own emancipation. A people fighting for their national liberation, against a creature of Western imperialists, is also fighting against colonialism and its ideological presuppositions that are now poisoning the entire French "left."
For the Revolutionary Communist Party, the struggle of the Palestinian Resistance, directly confronting the vanguard of Western imperialism, is vital for the proletariat of the entire planet; the Palestinians are a people active in their own history, fighting against Zionism, imperialism and reaction, in favor of their national liberation, a long struggle whose centrality and strategic nature for our own emancipation we must recognize.
The Zionist colonial state will fall, that is the direction of history; and Palestine will be free from the sea to the Jordan
[1] Equivalent of the CNC in France, financed by the colonial state and the Tel Aviv city council.