JERUSALEM: Veteran British film director Mike Leigh has cancelled a working visit to Jerusalem over plans to compel all non-Jewish new citizens to swear a controversial loyalty oath to Israel as a Jewish state.
The 67-year-old director, whose films include "Secrets and Lies" and "Naked", had been due to spend a week at the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School at the end of November, in a visit which would also have seen him visiting Palestinian film students and lecturers.
But one month before his trip, Leigh, who is Jewish, decided to cancel, citing increasing unease with Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians — and in particular, the government’s backing of an amendment to the citizenship oath widely criticized as racist.
In a letter sent to Renen Schorr, who heads the Sam Spiegel school, Leigh said he had "always had serious misgivings about coming," particularly after Israel’s catastrophic raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla in May, which left nine Turkish activists dead.
"Since then, your government has gone from bad to worse," he wrote. "I have become ever-increasingly uncomfortable about what would unquestionably appear as my implicit support for Israel was I to fulfill my promise and come."
Leigh said he had considered pulling out at the end of September, when Israel started building again on occupied Palestinian land following the expiry of a 10-month construction freeze.
But it was the cabinet’s backing of a law to compel all non-Jewish new citizens to swear an oath of loyalty to Israel as a "Jewish and democratic state" that pushed him over the edge, he wrote in the letter, seen by AFP.
"And now we have the loyalty oath. This is the last straw," he said, also mentioning Israel’s ongoing blockade on Gaza, which prompted the voyage of ill-fated sea convoy in May.
The loyalty oath won cabinet backing just two weeks after the freeze expired, in a move widely seen as targeting Palestinians seeking citizenship after marrying citizens from Israel’s Arab minority.
Since settlement building resumed, peace talks have been blocked, prompting furious diplomatic efforts to find a way to salvage negotiations which began just three weeks earlier.
