Soura Film Festival, the so-called “First Queer Middle East & North African Film Festival” completely excludes Palestinian filmmakers and has chosen to highlight Israeli films. Soft or strong, normalization is normalization!
This is not a theoretical debate, but a concrete demand to not exclude Palestine and the Palestinians from the discussion. The very fact that we need to write to SOURA about their exclusion of Palestine is absurd in this situation. But our moral responsibility demands us to expose such complicity wherever it appears.
Last year at the Radical Queer March, PoC, Black and Arab queers have made a loud and clear statement about the need of solidarity to exist between Black, PoC, queers, and other marginalized communities in the left, and the Palestinian struggle. We are not willing to compromise this victory in exchange for some movies being shown in a shallow context without including any Palestinian films or participants.