Roni Mahadav-Levin, executive director of the Jerusalem Cinematheque and Jerusalem Film Festival, has published an open letter urging Palestinian filmmakers to take part in next year's edition of the festival. He argued that boycotts of Israeli cultural institutions do not punish hardliners but empower them, and that withdrawing art from Israeli audiences effectively does the work of censors, since both aim to silence discourse and keep communities divided.

The 43rd Jerusalem Film Festival ran from 9 to 19 July, opening with Moshe Rosenthal's "Tell Me Everything" and hosting more than 30 international guests despite calls for a wider boycott of Israeli-linked film institutions. Several Palestinian and Arab-Israeli filmmakers took part this year, including actor Ehab Elias Salami, who won the festival's best acting award for his role in Assaf Machnes's "Where To?", while a curated programme of six Palestinian short films, "All That Remains," was also screened. Mahadav-Levin described Jerusalem's cinema audiences as diverse and unified by shared storytelling, and said he hopes more Palestinian artists will submit work for next year's festival.