Israeli ‘apartheid’ doccie seen at last after nine-year battle with The Labia Theatre

The anti-Israeli documentary, Roadmap to Apartheid, will finally be screened at a Cape Town cinema after a nine-year legal battle.

The 2012 film, which explains why many Palestinians feel they are living in conditions similar to those experienced under apartheid, will be shown next month after a ruling by the equality court in Cape Town. 

The Palestinian Solidarity Campaign (PSC) and the Labia Theatre locked horns shortly before the film’s release when cinema manager Ludi Kraus found it was not focused on SA, as he had initially expected. He also learnt the screening would be used to launch Israel Apartheid Week.  

At the time, court papers reveal, Kraus feared the film would alienate and offend patrons and harm his business so he declined to lease the independent cinema to the PSC.

The number of years Ludi Kraus has been at the helm of the Labia

—  30

 The theatre also issued a media statement saying: “We were asked to release the film — which was pure propaganda — at the start of a week of Israel-bashing and we do not get involved in politics.”

The PSC marched on the Labia, accusing it of censorship, and Kraus turned down a pro-Israeli group’s request to hire the Labia to show Crossing the Line: The Intifada Comes to Campus, “which claims to explore the proliferation of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic incidents in American universities”. 

The NGO Right2Know mediated a deal under which Roadmap to Apartheid would be followed by a discussion including the Zionist Federation, but the pro-Israeli group declined to take part.

The number of years the Labia Theatre and the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign have been embroiled in litigation over the screening of 'Roadmap to Apartheid'

—  9

Right2Know and the PSC then complained to the South African Human Rights Commission that the Labia’s refusal to show the film violated the constitution, and though the commission declined to rule on what it said was a commercial dispute, an appeal tribunal said the Labia had breached the right to equality and ordered it to screen the film.

The Labia still resisted and the equality court has now had the last word. Judge Andre le Grange ordered the Labia to screen the film within 60 days. “The PSC firmly believes that, historically, the Palestinians have suffered patterns of disadvantage. The conduct of the Labia in this matter does not ease that burden but actually perpetuates this pattern,” said Le Grange.

The PSC’s Martin Jansen said the campaign had been vindicated. “The ruling, like a few others in recent years regarding discrimination, sets a very positive precedent that gives concrete expression to our democratic rights in the constitution and the Bill of Rights,” he said. “The Labia will not be appealing and agreed to the film being screened on Saturday May 15.” 

May 15 is Nakba Day, a commemoration of what Palestinians say was the destruction of their society and homeland and the permanent displacement of most Palestinian people when Israel was established in 1948.

Kraus confirmed the Labia would not appeal, but said: “We do not think it is right that a private, independent cinema should be told what kind of films it should promote to the public and what it should screen.”

However, “with Covid-19 having badly affected our business, we simply do not have the financial resources to see this battle through to the Supreme Court of Appeal and then on to the Constitutional Court. I am also personally exhausted from the stress of dealing with the insults and threats that have been directed at the Labia, all over the matter of our not screening a particular film.” 

Rowan Polovin, chair of the South African Zionist Federation, dismissed the film as propaganda.

“It is equally offensive to millions of ordinary South Africans with ties to Israel, including Jews and Christians, and all who honestly and objectively care about a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” he said.