Jerry Seinfeld, Natalie Portman, Sacha Baron Cohen, Lisa Kudrow, Jason Alexander and Lenny Kravitz are among those endorsing a statement against what they call the "blacklisting" of Israeli artists at the TIFF, which runs through Saturday. The list was presented Tuesday by the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto and the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles.

Titled "We don't need another blacklist," the statement applauds the festival's decision to spotlight Tel Aviv in the program's inaugural City to City series. The original protesters did not call for a blacklist of Israeli artists at the festival, objecting only to the focus on Tel Aviv while ignoring the "brutal occupation" by Israel.

Visiting Israeli filmmakers "represent a dynamic national cinema, the best of Israel's open, uncensored, artistic expression. Anyone who has actually seen recent Israeli cinema É knows they are in no way a propaganda arm for any government policy," the statement said.

It adds that "blacklisting [the artists] only stifles the exchange of cultural knowledge that artists should be the first to defend and protect. Those who refuse to see these films for themselves or prevent them from being seen by others are violating a cherished right shared by Canada and all democratic countries."

Filmmakers Ivan Reitman, David Cronenberg and Norman Jewison issued statements last week attacking those who had criticized the festival for highlighting films from Tel Aviv.

"The attack on TIFF is a vile attempt by a gang of fashionable bigots to use coercive tactics to stifle voices they don't like," said Canadian filmmaker Robert Lantos. "These are not crusaders for justice."

Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said he was "outraged" by the protest against Tel Aviv.

The counterprotest, signed by about 100 artists, is in response to the so-called Toronto Declaration signed by more than 1,000 prominent filmmakers, actors and academics -- including Jane Fonda, Danny Glover, Harry Belafonte, Julie Christie and Alice Walker -- protesting that by showcasing movies from Tel Aviv, the festival, "whether intentionally or not, has become complicit in the Israeli propaganda machine."

The anti-Tel Aviv group had said it had nothing against the 10 individual filmmakers from Israel attending the festival or the screening of their movies. Rather, "we object to the use of such an important international festival in staging a propaganda campaign on behalf of É an apartheid regime."

New group pushing for

religious freedom in Israel

An organization calling for full religious freedom and diversity in Israel has been launched in Tel Aviv.

Hiddush, a Hebrew word for innovation and renewal, was launched Monday and is headed by Rabbi Uri Regev, a native Israeli and until recently president of the World Union for Progressive Judaism, and Stanley Gold, a Los Angeles businessman and philanthropist. Regev is CEO and president; Gold chairs Hiddush.

A statement released by the organization blames the lack of freedom of religion in Israel on "a chief rabbinate and an ultra-Orthodox ideology" that controls the lives of Israeli Jews "from birth to death and almost everything in between."

A survey of 1,200 Israelis conducted on behalf of the organization showed that 92 percent of Israel's secular Jews favored abolishing the Orthodox monopoly on marriage.

In addition, 80 percent were dissatisfied with gender-segregated seating on certain bus lines, 63 percent backed equal state funding for all Jewish denominations and 62 percent wanted public transportation to run on Saturdays.

Israeli cops to increase presence in E. Jerusalem

Israeli police have been ordered to "strengthen Israeli sovereignty over East Jerusalem," an Israeli newspaper reported this week.

Ha'aretz said that Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch, in a document on his ministry's policies for the next year, wrote that police need to "increase law enforcement and improve police services there, part of a wider move to strengthen Israeli sovereignty over East Jerusalem."

A general police policy prevents Palestinian Authority activity in the area, a provision of the 1993 Oslo Accords.

Aharonovitch also called for more police presence in non-Jewish towns in other parts of Israel "to increase the feeling of identification with the state and its symbols of authority, and to increase state sovereignty in those areas," according to Ha'aretz.

He also called on the police to improve relations with non-Jewish Israelis and to encourage them to join the civil guard.

Sa'ar: Students must learn values from both Ramons

Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar has instructed every homeroom teacher in the Education System to teach a lesson about the Ramon family this week, Army Radio reported on Monday night.

The lesson is to focus on the life stories and values of the late Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon, who died in the 2003 Columbia space shuttle disaster, and his son, Assaf, an Israeli Air Force pilot killed in a plane crash on Sunday.

Evangelical group helping needy Israelis for holidays

The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews is providing $4.6 million to help needy Israelis purchase food for the High Holidays.

The evangelical group is distributing 46,000 gift cards to be used at local supermarkets at a cost of $4 million, as well as distributing 15,000 food baskets through the Latet and Colel Chabad organizations at a cost of $600,000.

"This is the largest and most far-reaching food campaign ever in the history of Israel," said Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, the group's founder and president. "While we have supported tens of thousands of people in Israel with food each year for quite a while, especially before the New Year holiday period, the number of people in need has unfortunately skyrocketed this year."

The fellowship is coordinating the food campaign, which will reach hundreds of thousands of Israelis, with welfare offices across Israel.

-- compiled from reports filed by JTA News and Features, The Jerusalem Post and other sources