Sunday, the Israeli-Palestinian co-production No other land has received an Oscars of the best documentary. The Oscar – A first for Palestine – was now added to the list of 45 prizes that the film has won since its release in 2024, including the best documentary of the 2024 European Film Awards, the 2024 Berlin International Film Festival and the 2024 Gotham Awards.
Functionality has received praise of criticism and five -star criticisms in international media. It has been thrown into the world and has always sold independent projections in the United States. And yet, no American distributor would pick it up to show it nationally. The only reason is its subject: Palestine.
The documentary follows the life of the Palestinian communities of Masafer Yatta, an area near Hebron in the south occupying in the West Bank, which the Israeli army declared a “military zone”. Under this pretext, Israeli troops and illegal settlers regularly harass its residents and destroy their houses, making them homeless. The story is told through the objective of the Codirectors Basel Adra, Palestinian activist, and Yuval Abraham, Israeli journalist.
This raw and heartbreaking representation of the current crimes of Israel is something that distributors are clearly afraid of showing. And it is in a country that prides itself on its constitutionally guaranteed law for freedom of expression.
The fear of distributors is a great illustration of how the campaign is massive to erase Palestine in the United States, affecting all aspects of public life – of media and arts education and cinema.
Of course, anti-Palestinian censorship is nothing new. Since 1948, Palestinian culture and history have continuously faced an attempted erasure while Israel has tried to justify their seizure of the land, affirming that the Palestinian people do not exist and have no right to their own land. This account also dominated public perceptions in Western countries that supported Israel throughout its existence – above all in the United States.
Maintaining this story was essential to continue political support.
If the American public is exposed to more information on what is happening in Palestine, if the Palestinians are humanized in the dominant current, if they receive a platform to tell their stories about genocide and apartheid, then public opinion would start spectacularly.
It’s already. Various polls in the past year have shown that the Americans, in particular the Democrats, disagreed with the policies of their government in Israel-Palestine. The majority of Democrats supported a cease-fire in Gaza when President Joe Biden’s administration refused to approve him. This position finally cost Kamala Harris countless votes during the presidential election.
An important change in public opinion on Israel-Palestine would make it difficult for the US Congress to support the financing of several billion dollars of Israeli military and political support for occupation and apartheid.
This is why the erasure campaign – led by Israel itself – against Palestinian voices, stories and history must be maintained.
But the challenges that no other land has encountered since its release is not only another clear case of anti-Palestinian censorship.
The film shared the narration between a Palestinian and an Israeli. It is not only the voice of Adra that is heard in the documentary talking about what is happening in Palestine, but also of Abraham.
As the latter recognized it during his speech to accept Oscar prices: “Together, our voices are stronger.” Indeed, if the film was entirely manufactured by the Palestinians, it would have been labeled as biased and had difficulty attracting the same level of global attention. Having an Israeli co -director has probably opened certain doors, but it also made it more “dangerous”.
In his speech, Abraham said: “When I look at Basel, I see my brother, but we are unequal. We live in a regime where I am free by virtue of civil law, but Basel must live under military laws which destroy his life and he cannot control. There is a different path. A political solution without ethnic supremacy. »»
The idea of an Israeli like Abraham expressing opposition to apartheid and occupation is clearly not tolerated. It does not correspond to the traditional account that Israel is the moral compass and that all the Palestinians wish only the erasure of all the Jews.
There are many Jewish Americans who share Abraham’s opinions and have spoken against Israel. They were not only described as “Jews who hate themselves” by supporters of Israel, but were also harassed, censored, accused of anti -Semitism and even arrested during demonstrations.
Such attacks under the guise of “countering anti -Semitism” and “for the sake of Jewish security” have in fact made many Jews dangerous.
Abraham himself was made to feel “dangerous and unwelcome” in Germany – the country itself which made its reason for the protection of Israel and the Jewish people – after its speech of acceptance of the Berlin Festival Film last year.
German politicians rushed to label his “anti -Semitic” speech, while the website of the City of Berlin did not describe any other land as “presenting anti -Semitic trends”.
Like the United States, Germany has only doubled the support of Israel since the start of its genocidal campaign in Gaza. In this way, the two countries, like the rest of the Western supporters of Israel, have become obstacles to peace.
Abraham alluded to this point even during his speech of acceptance, saying that it is “foreign policy helping to block the path of peace.
Despite all the challenges he faced, no other land has managed to succeed. In the hope of still reaching a wider audience in the United States, filmmakers have chosen to self-distribute in certain theaters. To find out where the film projects, you can visit its website.
No other land is a powerful film that Americans must see. As Adra stressed it in a recent interview for Democracy Now, we hold responsibility. Our tax money finances the destruction of its community, which only accelerated last year.
A few weeks before the Oscars victory, Adra wrote on social networks: “Whoever cared about any other land should not worry about what is really going on on the field … Masafer Yatta disappears before my eyes.”
Americans must act.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Tel Aviv Tribune.