[Order Michael Finch’s new book, A Time to Stand: HERE. Prof. Jason Hill calls it “an aesthetic and political tour de force.”]

At the 82nd Venice Film Festival, thousands of pro-Hamas protesters, organized by the group Venice4Palestine, appeared just as the Festival opened, causing mayhem as they marched through the city and screamed their demand that an invitation to Israeli actress Gal Gadot be rescinded. Her crime was being an Israeli, and not only that, but an Israeli who refused to criticize her embattled country for its war of self-defense against the terror group Hamas. More on the protesters, who can now chalk up another victory in their propaganda war against the Jewish state, can be found here: “Thousands of pro-Palestine protesters gather at Venice Film Festival to put spotlight back on Gaza,” by Mathilda Heller, Jerusalem Post, September 1, 2025:

Thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators congregated in Venice on Saturday during the 82nd Venice International Film Festival to protest the war in Gaza.

The protest was organized by Venice4Palestine, a coalition of Italian film professionals and international film professionals.

Ahead of the march, the group said it wanted to “break the silence on the systematic violence by the Israeli army and on the complicity of governments just as the media attention will be focused on the Film Festival.”

The pro-Hamas demonstrators in Venice wanted “to break the silence” on the “systematic violence by the Israeli army”? Why, there is no subject that has received such round-the-clock attention, throughout the world’s media, than the war in Gaza and the putative crimes of the IDF. The group in Venice simply wanted to add its voice to the vast chorus of people screaming their rage, fueled by an anti-Israel animus so deep that it long ago descended into naked antisemitism.

The week before, the group wrote an open letter to the Venice Film Festival saying “We – activists and workers in the film, media and news fields – believe that for once, the show must stop: We must interrupt the flow of indifference and open a path to awareness.”…

What “flow of indifference” is that? Our giddy globe is full of anti-Israel marches, manifestos, strikes, all focusing on the crimes of the “ethnic-cleansing genocidal” Jewish state. No other subject receives such constant coverage.

Venice4Palestine also urged the festival to withdraw its invitations to Israeli actress Gal Gadot.

Italian actress Tecla Insolia told Corriere that excluding Gadot “is the minimum” and did not count as “discrimination.”…

So preventing the appearance of an actress because she is Jewish and Israeli does not constitute, according to actress Tecla Insolia, “discrimination.”

Gal Gadot refuses to denounce her own government for waging a war it did not start and did not want, on a terror group that has promised to repeat the atrocities — rapes, tortures, mutilations, murders — that it carried out on October 7, 2023 “again and again.” For this she is to be consigned to the outer darkness.

The director of the festival, Alberto Barbera, later confirmed to Variety that Gadot would not be attending.

He also told Deadline on Sunday that he offered the protesters the opportunity to send a delegation to the red carpet, but they declined and did not enter the festival grounds.

“They didn’t want to interfere with the festival,” he said.

The protesters didn’t “want to interfere with the festival”? But that was the whole point of their demonstrations — to interfere with the festival so that the Israeli actress Gal Gadot would not be allowed to appear. And those demonstrators won; despite her earlier invitation, Gadot will not now be taking part in the festival.

Was Gal Gadot’s invitation rescinded by the Festival’s director, Alberto Barrera, or did she conclude that her presence, and the mayhem that was sure to ensue, would simply be too disruptive and would take attention away from the Festival’s offerings? Either way, she is owed an apology by the Festival for her withdrawal. It’s one more victory for the legions of pro-Hamas Europeans, one more defeat for decency.