The Jewish Film Festival, duly funded by Jewish Federation, decided to hold a Rachel Corrie screening. They publicized the event to venomously anti-Israel groups. They organized a talk by Corrie's committed Israel-hating mother. They even went so far as to link up with some explicitly pro-Hamas extremists. Then they were surprised when their festival became a bubbling cesspool of antisemitism. Who could have predicted that?

There's really no way to describe the Mos Eisley Cantina feel of an anti-Israel San Francisco event. Suffice to say that "sea of black broken by the occasional green Hamas hat or banner" isn't too far from the literal truth.It's rare that you get to call out a leftist or Jewish organization for being openly pro-terrorist - usually they prefer to wallow in mere terrorist apologism - but the Jewish Voice for Peace, the American Friends Service Committee, the Rachel Corrie Foundation, and the International Solidarity Movement took that plunge a while ago.

Maybe that's unfair and they have some other way that their anti-Zionist fantasies about the destruction of Israel play out. But probably not and, in any case, they were pretty psyched to be there.

It's OK though. Because the Festival organizers - which, I should probably mention again, get their paychecks and their funding courtesy of Jewish donations - did all this in the name of opening up dialogue. That's why, per this post at The American Muslim, the festival gave Michael Harris of San Francisco Voice for Israel 5 whole minutes to suggest that maybe standing in front of military bulldozers to protect terrorist rocket smuggling tunnels is a bad idea.

Of course the assembled crowd turned on him and started celebrating the pro-boycott Jewish organizations that had hijacked the festival, transforming the entire spectacle into a clamorous morale-booster for the anti-Israel left. But whatever:

The audience settled back into subdued groans for a few phrases, but when Michael accused Jewish Voice for Peace and the American Friends Service Committee of being backers of terrorism, the audience erupted into applause at the mention of each name... The concern for respectful treatment of Cindy Corrie's presentation at the end of the film was also unwarranted. The audence was so completely supportive of her, her daughter and Palestinian rights that there was not a hint of the hateful messages with which the organizers had been deluged prior to the showing. It was astonishing. Although the audience was by no means all Jewish, a large number clearly were.

Oh, it's not all that astonishing.

I'm posting two videos from the festival, though they're both a bit overwrought and long. The first is an overview of the groups that attended and that are playing a not insignificant role in boycotting, isolating, and destroying the Jewish State. The second is difficult to describe but begins with Rachel Corrie's mom on stage explaining why Israel must be shunned and goes downhill from there.