Now it’s personal. The growing flap over TIFF’s homage to Tel Aviv has Canadian filmmakers pitted against one another.

Veteran producer Robert Lantos was among the filmmakers who on Thursday took aim at organizers of the ‘Toronto Declaration’ — a protest against the Israeli film sidebar said to have more than 1,000 online signatures.

‘Their brand of political censorship is at odds with the most cherished values of Canadian society: Freedom of expression and freedom of choice,’ Lantos charged in a strongly worded statement issued by the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto.

Toronto-based docmaker Simcha Jacobovici urged John Greyson, the filmmaker who earlier sparked the TIFF boycott by withdrawing his short Covered, to screen the gay-themed movie in Tel Aviv and in the occupied territories.

‘He should document the experience on video and then enter it into next year’s TIFF — posthumously,’ said Jacobovici.

Also siding with the festival in support of its City-to-City program are filmmakers David Cronenberg, Norman Jewison, Ivan Reitman, Saul Rubinek and actor Minnie Driver.

‘Empowered groups of people, deciding whose stories can, and cannot be told, does nothing but remind us of oppression that has no place in film-making,’ Driver said.

In the opposing camp, the latest additions to the artist-led protest include local filmmakers Richard Fung, Velcro Ripper, Min Sook Lee, Paul Lee, Mike Hoolboom and Lynne Fernie. Also on board the protest are Canucks Noam Gonick, Malcolm Guy, Anne Henderson and Ian Iqbal Rashid.

They join Greyson, Mark Achbar and Kathy Wazana — the original signatories to the Toronto Declaration — along with U.S. actors Jane Fonda and Danny Glover. Also on board is Viggo Mortensen, who has starred in two recent Cronenberg pictures, A History of Violence and Eastern Promises.

Posted online, the open letter to TIFF argues that the festival has become a pawn of Israel as it looks to polish its international image.

The controversial City-to-City sidebar gets underway on Sunday, with 10 Israeli films in all to screen through to Thursday.

Protest organizers are planning to air their differences at a Monday ‘public forum,’ which they insist does not amount to film censorship.

Author/activist Naomi Klein, another of the Declaration’s co-authors, argued that ‘publicly opposing TIFF’s decision is not an act of censorship, but its opposite: the use of cherished rights of freedom of speech and opinion.’

TIFF organizers, while continuing to insist the Tel Aviv homage was programmed without Israeli government interference, insist it is succeeding in stirring encouraged debate.

‘We welcome that dialogue because film is an art form that we get passionate about,’ TIFF co-director Cameron Bailey told the festival’s opening ceremony Thursday night at Roy Thomson Hall.

The Toronto International Film Festival continues to Sept. 19.