Israeli Director Amos Gitai Dismisses Calls for Venice Title ‘Why War’ to Be Boycotted

Israeli director Amos Gitai has pushed back against efforts for his Venice-bowing film “Why War” to be boycotted from the festival.

Premiering out of the competition over the weekend, the film takes its cue from correspondence in the early 1930s between Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud as they attempted to answer questions relating to the human race’s bellicose nature and how to avoid war.

On the eve of the festival, “Why War” — alongside Dani Rosenberg’s “Of Dogs and Men” — was the subject of a letter signed by more than 300 artists, including filmmakers such as Hany Abu Assad, Enrico Parenti and Alessandra Ferrini, asserting that the film has been “created by complicit Israeli production companies that contribute to apartheid, occupation and now genocide through their silence or active participation in artwashing.”

But Gitai, speaking at a press conference on Saturday, argued that those calling for the boycott hadn’t see “Why War” and said that the film hadn’t received any Israeli state money.

Despite the ongoing devastation in Gaza, Gitai said he was optimistic that the Israel-Palestinian conflict would be resolved one day.

“Sometimes the worst low point will give a place to reconciliation because these people will understand this is no the way to go on. They cannot go on killing one another and proclaiming this as victory. These are empty propositions,” he said, adding that both the Palestinian militant group Hamas and Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government had to go in the name of peace.

“The two groups have to understand that the proposition of being under Hamas is not a good proposition. There will be no rights for women, no Christians of the Orient, no LGBT rights, nothing. The Iranians already went this way when they got behind Khomeini and they’re stuck with it,” he noted.

“We the Israelis have to get rid of the extremist, nationalist, right-wing, racist, ultra-religious government that we have. The two groups have to do some cleaning on their stuff and then maybe a new bridge can be constructed. It’s not there now but we have to keep the idea that one day, it will come, and I think it will come.”