For those of you who bought tickets to the Jerusalem Film Festival, you might want to know that the docket now contains one less film. The Yes Men Fix the World, about a group called the Yes Men who "impersonate big-time criminals in order to publicly humiliate them," will no longer be screened at the Festival. The Yes Men themselves have written this open letter to the festival's organizers in order to explain why they chose to pull their movie from the lineup:

Dear Friends at the Jerusalem Film Festival,

We regret to say that we have taken the hard decision to withdraw our film, “The Yes Men Fix the World,” from the Jerusalem Film Festival in solidarity with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign (http://www.bdsmovement.net/).

This decision does not come easily, as we realize that the festival opposes the policies of the State of Israel, and we have no wish to punish progressives who deplore the state-sponsored violence committed in their name. This decision does not come easily, as we feel a strong affinity with many people in Israel, sharing with them our Jewish roots, as well as the trauma of the Holocaust, in which both our grandfathers died. Andy lived in Jerusalem for a year long ago, can still get by in Hebrew, and counts several friends there. And Mike has always wanted to connect with the roots of his culture.

But despite all our feelings, we cannot abandon our mission as activists. In the 1980s, there was a call from the people of South Africa to artists and others to boycott that regime, and it helped end apartheid there. Today, there is a clear call for a boycott from Palestinian civil society. Obeying it is our only hope, as filmmakers and activists, of helping put pressure on the Israeli government to comply with international law.

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In his third dispatch from the Middle East, Judeo-Arabic American Joseph Braude reports on the travails of the Arabian peninsula's only Jewish community. Manama, Bahrain — The Jewish community in this micro-kingdom of 35 islands in the Arabian Gulf was never more than a few hundred strong. Now there are 30 left. One is an advisor to the king, a second is in linBefore the Storm: Jewish Bahraini family, ...