I Dare You to Watch this Documentary
My documentary review of the controversial "No Other Land" from its final screening in O Cinema in Miami Beach last week
“Am I in the right place?” I asked a young lady wearing a mask as I opened the door to Old City Hall in Miami Beach. “What are you looking for?” she asked me. “O cinema,” I said with my eyes gazing downwards at Google Maps on my iPhone. I’ve probably driven by this building hundreds of times in my life, but have never stepped foot inside. It turns out that it’s an architectural landmark, a 1920s Mediterranean-style building that was the home of the Miami Beach municipal government until 1977. “You’re in the right place,” she said. “It’s a historic building, so we can’t put signs on it.” Hearing her words but still unsure, I glanced down the hallway of this 100-year-old lobby and finally saw the universal sign of a cinema, a dusty, red velvet rope. Cue the harp. I had made it.
But…I still needed a ticket to see the controversial Israeli-Palestinian, Oscar-winning documentary “No Other Land”, which was unfortunately sold out. Given that this was the last night they were showing it at this theater, and that the film was unable to find a single U.S. distributor, I took a gamble and showed up 30 minutes early to try and figure out a way in.
This is normally a film I would see, given that I’ve seen nearly all of the best feature documentary nominees from the past 20 years. My first job in journalism was as a documentary critic for the Sun Sentinel newspaper in South Florida. It also focuses on this tiny region of the world, which I am deeply interested in and am also quite familiar with. My last job in journalism was as a video journalist who covered Israel and the Palestinian territories, where I spent a disproportionate amount of my work days going in and out of the West Bank.
This film had yet another thing going for it that caused me to rush to the theater on a Thursday night, dateless and alone, with my dear wife handling dinner and putting our three kids to bed. God bless her. That extra intangible was that this film, which was only being shown in one venue in South Florida, this tiny cinematheque that is leased by, and also partially funded by, the city of Miami Beach. The mayor of Miami Beach, Steven Meiner, who is Jewish, made international headlines after he drafted a city resolution to cancel said lease and funding, which essentially was an eviction order, due to O Cinema’s decision to screen the Oscar-winning documentary “No Other Land.” In a statement, Mayor Meiner branded the joint Israeli and Palestinian production as “antisemitic.”
Some may argue that the opinions of a mayor in South Florida, thousands of miles from the South Hebron Hills, don’t really have any consequence on events in the Middle East, but I beg to differ. As it turns out, the largest donors to the illegal West Bank settlements are wealthy South Florida families. Certainly, a film that shows how these tens of millions of dollars are being spent should be relevant to them and those who may be considering similar donations.
I grew up in North Miami Beach and became close friends with many of the children and grandchildren of these mega donors. We went to the same Zionist, Orthodox Jewish day school where we sang Israel’s national anthem, “Hatikvah,” every single morning before the pledge of allegiance. I have lived about 25% of my life in Israel. I am not that religious, but I am extremely proud to be Jewish and care deeply, perhaps irrationally, about Israel. I take accusations of “anti-Semitism” pretty seriously. Was the mayor correct in calling this film “anti-Semitic”? Who are these Leni Riefenstahl wannabes that would dare defame my people?
Yet another box this film checked for me is that it is rubbing up against my favorite amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, el numero uno. While I don’t believe there is anything unconstitutional about a city choosing which art or cinemas to finance or support, the Mayor’s accusations, along with parallel and related events, have effectively chilled free speech and legitimate non-violent protest in this country. This should concern anyone who cares about anti-Semitism and free speech in the United States.
The arrest and prolonged detention of Columbia student organizer Mahmoud Khalil, a legal permanent resident of the United States, is a case in point. While I don’t doubt that Khalil is anti-Semitic, since anti-Zionism is essentially a thinly cloaked veil for anti-Semitism, we should remember that opposing Israeli policies and anti-Zionism (read: anti Semitism) are two completely different concepts. Millions of people, including many Israelis and Jews around the world, oppose Israeli government policies and believe in Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. They are clearly not anti-Semites.
There are also plenty of anti-Semites who do not engage in violent or illegal activities. As we learned in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision on the neo-Nazi rally in Skokie, Illinois in 1977, even the most vile, racist, anti-Semitic (read: anti-Zionist) speech is protected speech under the U.S. Constitution.
I don’t know which anti-Semitic bucket Khalil falls in, but I’m yet to see the proof that he has done anything illegal or has any relationship to the terrorist group, Hamas.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for the United States arresting and deporting anyone they can prove supported the terrorist organization Hamas, or have done anything violent or illegal, but having been to many repressive countries, I’m glad to live in a country in which the government, in theory, protects all manners of non-violent speech and the writ of habeas corpus. Even the most loathsome individual or group should not be disappeared in the middle of the night without showing evidence to a judge in the first 24 hours of an arrest. This is what happens in Gaza, not in the United States.
The atmosphere in the US today rhymes with 1950s McCarthyism, substituting pro-Communist beliefs with an absurdly broad definition of anti-Semitism in which protected anti-Semitic speech is suddenly becoming the equivalent of working for Hamas. This is why, in today’s climate, an accusation of anti-Semitism can lead to devastating consequences for an individual or piece of art.
Which leads me back to the final reason I rushed out to see this film. Whenever a politician or government tries to censor, blacklist, or smear a piece of a film, a book, or a piece of art, don’t walk to see it. Run! Run as if your life depends on it. See it! Screen it! Write about it!
And so that’s what I did, bravely navigating the parking situation in Miami Beach and the hordes of frat boys who descend on my city for a strange annual American tradition called “Spring Break.” I approached the velvet rope and saw two female employees behind the counter. A glass container filled with individually wrapped Kettle Corn packets and an open bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon was ready to be poured. It was the quintessential arthouse cinema, the quaintest imaginable movie experience. It even had its own library. It felt like the quietest place I’ve been to in decades. I couldn’t even hear the hum of the air conditioner on a hot Miami night in March.
“Is this actually the place that made international headlines last week?” I asked sarcastically to no one in particular. The lady with the red hair interjected, “We’re a small theater with a big mouth.” She was the CEO, Vivian Marthell. We chatted and I congratulated her on the city dropping the resolution threatening her funding and her lease. “It’s not over yet,” she said. There’s another resolution encouraging us to show another film to balance this one.” I asked what she thought of the resolution. “It’s unconstitutional,” she said. I was surprised by the answer, which indicated that she was gearing up for another fight.
“I don't have a ticket, but I really want to see this film. Anyway, can I get in? “You’re in luck,” the girl in the mask said. Three people just cancelled, so we will have a ticket for you. Just wait on the other side of the velvet rope.” “Sure thing,” I exclaimed with a grin. I waited behind the velvet as instructed, unpeeled a mandarin, and unwittingly became part of the greeting committee. I befriended a Lebanese man who commented on my healthy eating choices. I smiled at an older lady with a Magen David on her necklace. The girl in the mask greeted every patron with a friendly “hello.” I felt as if I had landed in a different era, a nicer era.
Finally, I was allowed to buy a ticket. I skipped the kettle corn and the wine and found one of the last seats in the middle of the tiny 70-person theater. Marthell came in to give a little speech of gratitude before the show started, saying, “Our decision to screen No Other Land is not a declaration of political alignment. It is a reaffirmation of our fundamental belief that every voice deserves to be heard, and perhaps especially when it challenges us.” The packed house clapped. The theater went dark. The screen filled with light.
You probably want to know what I think of the film. I will get to that.
But first, I must share this with you. When I went to my Zionist elementary school, my Zionist youth movement, and on my Zionist trip to Israel in 1995, I learned a story. A beautiful, tragic, and true story about the Jewish people, my people, my ancestors, who came from South Africa by way of Lithuania by way of Judea — and then 2,000 or so years later, miraculously returned to this same land where our culture, language, and peoplehood came together and crystallized once again. We revived an ancient language and started a new country where an old kingdom once stood, called Israel, that is today thriving in countless ways. It is a truly remarkable story.
That said, there is another side to the story that I never learned in my Zionist school, or even in my public high school. It wasn’t until I went to college and studied international relations that I made my first Palestinian friend and learned this narrative that completely blew me away. The fact is that hundreds of thousands of Arabs who refused to accept the Jewish state lost their homes and their land. That is what we celebrate as “Yom Haatzmaut”, the Palestinians mourn as the Nakba, “catastrophe”. And this injustice runs like a river parallel to Anti-semitism. And surely, just as anti-Semitism has risen precipitously around the world, so too have land seizures and violence in the West Bank. Could it be that our greatest moment of justice, finally getting a state of our own after millennia of anti-Semitic repression and violence, led to the greatest moment of injustice for another people? Could it be that the joint failure of Israeli and Palestinian leaders to resolve this injustice has become the root cause of the latest strain of the anti-Semitic mind virus? Such is the luck of the Jews.
I honestly didn’t know the answers to these questions at age 23, but I was so curious, and admittedly frustrated, about this gap in my education that I decided to devote my life to filling it. I lived all over the map in Israel and the Palestinian territories, among Jews, Muslims, and Christians, in a kibbutz, in Rishon le Tzion, in East Jerusalem, in the West Bank, and even in Gaza. I worked as a journalist in all these places, along with many other Middle Eastern countries. I learned that I would never want to live anywhere permanently in the Middle East except Israel. For those living in Israel proper, including 1 million Muslim and Christian Arabs who are Israeli citizens, Israel is by far the freest and liberal country in the region. I fell madly in love with the vibrant, diverse city of Tel Aviv.
But when I drove about 45 minutes from my beachside Tel Aviv apartment into the West Bank as a journalist, driving a 1984 Opel Corsa sometimes through the Qalandia checkpoint or sometimes leaving it just outside, I entered a completely different reality.
It is a reality that triggered memories from another part of my personal, early history. My parents are South African, and I happened to be living there as a 6-year-old boy when I was just learning how to read. Some of my earliest memories were from mid-1980s South Africa. I remember asking my parents to explain the meaning behind the grotesque, racist signs of South African apartheid. Mommy, what does “European or Whites only bathroom” mean? Are we “white?”
At first, I remember this feeling of cognitive dissonance, reading similar signs that discriminate based on your religion. One highway for the Israeli cars with the yellow plates. The other is for Palestinian cars with the green plates. I was always surprised at how easy it was to get into the West Bank, and how hard it was to get out, even going from one city to a neighboring city. It’s eerily similar to the Bantustan system created by the white nationalists in South Africa. You can often just drive right in, or take a shared Palestinian taxi, without much hassle. But the way out of each enclave is a different story. Many times I would go back to Israel on foot, joining the lines of thousands of Palestinians being herded like cattle through gates in order to go work in Israel, or visit a relative in a nearby village, or pray in Jerusalem. I would try to sneak in a few shots, but filming there would lead to my camera getting confiscated, or worse. It was a dehumanizing experience that I don’t think anyone could ever get used to. Sometimes, upon returning to Israel proper, the IDF thought I was Palestinian because of my hooptie-looking vehicle (which screamed Arab) or because I was meeting with Palestinians. I would often get harassed until I could prove that I was Jewish. If showing my credentials or speaking Hebrew didn’t work, I’d have to mention the addresses of where my family lives in Israel. And if that failed, recite my Bar Mitzvah portion.
The West Bank is the closest thing I’ve ever seen to actual Apartheid in my lifetime, except that, instead of skin color, your religion is the sole factor that determines your rights. There are separate roads, separate schools, and separate laws governing the land. If you’re Jewish, you get building permits, due process, and resources like water and electricity. If you’re not Jewish, you are often not entitled to any of that. And in some tragic cases, you do not get any of those things, and when you complain or protest, you get thrown in jail or a bullet in the stomach.
I remember one night I was on a private bus with a church group on Christmas Eve, having just documented Christmas in Bethlehem for Time magazine. Upon reaching the checkpoint, the soldiers stopped us, individually frisked us, searching every seat, every bag, opening the engine block, only to discover sheets of music and women in tears. We were a group of Palestinian choir girls plus one random Jewish-South African-American journalist just trying to get home to East Jerusalem from Bethlehem after Midnight mass. A journey of 15 minutes was turned into a 4-hour ordeal. I watched as people with names and faces like mine harassed and embarrassed, verbally assaulting human beings for no good reason. Yes, there is a legitimate security component to the checkpoints, but this doesn’t excuse much of the terrible things that happen to innocent people on a near-daily basis. And the more time you spend in the West Bank, especially in the South Hebron Hills, you come to understand there is something else going on here.
What confuses a lot of people is that I’m only referring to the West Bank here. I’m not talking about Israel proper, which is largely a democracy with all the usual warts and challenges. I’m also not talking about Gaza, which is a theocracy currently run by a terrorist death cult. The West Bank is its own animal, and I would argue, is the most consequential battleground for the future of the people in the region.
Which leads me to the film. Almost. Before I get into it, I want to tell you something that has really irked me. So many people I know, referring mainly to Jews who live in Miami, many of whom since 10/7 have justifiably hardened their stance on the conflict, are citing some kind of principled position for why they won’t see this film. They espouse the same principle as Mayor Meiner of Miami Beach. They claim that the film is anti-Semitic propaganda. The proof, as you’ll see below, is nonexistent.
I've read countless social media threads in which folks from my community say they would see the film, but the “timing is bad” with anti-semitism on the rise around the world, or that they didn’t like the Oscar acceptance speech of its Israeli Jewish director because he didn’t mention the word “Hamas.” Some people from my community espoused Hamas-like views, indicating that they don’t give a damn what happens to the Palestinians.
To those who are already offended by a film you have never seen, get over yourself. You can’t claim to care about Israel and its future and also refuse to learn about all sides of it. How uncomfortable are you with your views that you are frightened to watch a little documentary? Wake up and smell the black, muddy Turkish coffee. Israel is not the fantasy land they show you on Birthright trips. The more this reality is hidden, the longer it will take for us to ever create an actual fantasy land where kids on both sides don’t have to die pointless and premature deaths.
Since I know that a handful of my readers might feel offended by the paragraphs above, I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings. I love my community, including dear friends who may espouse the above views. My only goal, which has always been my guiding principle, is truth. I want people to better understand the reality of Israel and the Palestinian territories so we can have a more honest debate about reality and how to help the people there live in peace. Given the volume of donations and tax dollars that flow to Israel and the West Bank settlements from Miami and the United States, it’s an important conversation to have.
I understand that many people are still very upset about 10/7, and believe me, I am, too. This trauma will never go away. But this doesn’t justify living in denial about what’s going on in other parts of the Land. I also understand that all human beings suffer from the well-documented confirmation bias. My argument to you is that maintaining this bias does nothing to help, and only helps to perpetuate the conflict. Any decent human being with basic knowledge of the conflict should not see Israel and Hamas as morally equivalent, not by a long shot. However, those who ignore the reality of Palestinian suffering are doing precisely what the brainwashed hordes of Leftists or Hamas supporters do when they refuse to correct their own blind spots about Israel, Jewish indigenity, and the true horrors of anti-Semitic violence by Islamists. Justifying or ignoring your tribe’s violence or oppression weakens any moral claim you try to make against the other.
I’ve written in the past about how a shared narrative is one of the keys to lasting peace. Ignoring the other side’s narrative doesn’t make it go away, or make it any less true. It just reduces the conflict to a zero-sum game in which there is only one victim and one oppressor. This is the greatest, most comforting lie that zealots on both sides tell themselves before bed at night. This is the bedtime story that has already slayed tens of thousands of children. How many more will have to die before we start to tell a different story?
Ok, glad we got that out of the way. Hey, this is a film review, people. Pop your corn. Let’s talk about movies!
Wait, sorry. I have one more preamble before I get into this. It's the last one, and I promise no more rants.
All great films should have verisimilitude, which is a fancy way of saying believability. This means they can be made-up stories, but to be compelling, they must be believable. Documentaries, unlike fiction films, have a totally different bar to meet. Their origins are not in the theatrical arts but in journalism. Therefore, they must be grounded in reality and depict it accurately. The best docs are educational tools with an edge. Some of them actually lack verisimilitude because they are too unbelievable, but they are in fact true stories. The best docs stir up complex emotions on challenging subjects, but they must get the story they cover essentially right.
A great documentary presents a slice of reality. They often dive deep into a tiny place. They can be a narrow window into one person, one animal, or one village's world. The filmmakers choose the context and, in doing so, inject their biases. To tell the whole reality would be impossible, and if you were to try it, it would lead to a very long and terrible film. No, what we want in documentaries is access to a small, symbolic story that tells you about a reality you may not be aware of. The best documentaries present a hidden world that, for whatever reason, doesn’t get coverage on the more superficial mainstream news cycle.
This documentary, “No Other Land,” does all this and more. Its message rings true based on everything I know, have seen, and experienced myself in the South Hebron Hills after watching it for 95 unflinching minutes in the theater, and living in it for a decade.
It tells the first-person story of a young man named Basel Adra who grows up like many Palestinian kids in the tiny village of Masfer Yatta. He has basically spent his entire life watching his village get bulldozed, the people he loves get arrested, and or/shot by the IDF or radical Jewish settlers. In the West Bank, the settlers often act as paramilitaries, covering their faces, with the protection of the IDF. While there are certainly non-violent, peace-loving settlers, there is also this radical element that regularly intimidates, loots, and terrorizes innocent Palestinians with impunity. This is, unfortunately, a fact.
The film does present the Israeli government's side, which is that in the early 1980s, this cluster of villages with only about 1,000 residents who had been there for many generations, was suddenly declared a “closed military zone.” The villagers couldn’t do anything about it, except protest. Imagine your government suddenly closing your neighborhood so they can fire weapons there. They demolish your house, your school, your way of life. They cut off your water and electricity. Your permits to rebuild are never granted. You are forced to move into a cave. When you protest, they threaten you, arrest you, or shoot you. This is, unfortunately, Palestinian village life in the South Hebron Hills, and many other parts of the West Bank. I witnessed it with my eyes, in person, and through the magic of cinema, I felt as if I got transported right back there.
Nothing that I’ve written here should be controversial or debatable. This essay, like the film that I’m about to write about, is not about politics or some shadowy, murky history. It’s about actual daily life in the South Hebron Hills. You can go see it for yourself if you want today. In fact, the other Palestinian co-director of the film, Hamdan Ballal, was attacked by settlers and detained by the IDF in his first trip back after accepting his Oscar. Many times, and in this instance, the IDF will say they are responding to rock-throwing as the justification for far more serious violence against unarmed Palestinians. This is the pattern now for decades. Sometimes the Palestinians do start, it’s often impossible to know for sure, but in the wild West Bank, might equals right, and the IDF and the settlers are the ones with the guns and the jails.
The stories of Palestinian victimization are countless and backed up by plenty of visual and incanubular documentation by both Israeli and international human rights groups. They are also validated by thousands of testimonies of former IDF soldiers themselves, who often are traumatized by the things they are forced to do as part of their compulsory military service. The film doesn’t assign blame for the occupation or ask why it exists. It simply shows it for what it is. The question for people now is not whether this film is accurate, but how mature, responsible, and intellectually honest people should react to this terrible reality.
I really don’t know how to diagnose people who choose to live in a state of denial. Is it too difficult a concept for people to understand that the IDF can be both a heroic army and also capable of terrible crimes? There should be no confusion that in these small villages of the West Bank, these specific Palestinians, including Basel and his family, are the victims. And in this instance, the state, IDF, and the settlers who harass and shoot them are the oppressors. This equation obviously gets reversed when you consider the Jewish villages along the Gaza border, like Nahal Oz, Kfar Azza, etc, which were marauded in the most barbaric way on 10/7. In this instance, they are the clear-cut victims, and Hamas is the most depraved oppressor. An intelligent human being should be capable of holding both these truths in their brain at once without it exploding.
Speaking of Hamas, the film doesn’t mention them, and the filmmakers didn’t mention them in the Oscars because there is no evidence that the Masafer Yatta area is a Hamas stronghold, or even has a single Hamas supporter. While Hamas is very present in the refugee camps and larger cities of the West Bank, the Masafer Yatta area is not one of them. Even the PA has very little influence or connection to these villages that are sort of like tiny islands in this arid landscape abutting the Judean desert. Thus, it is totally fair not to talk about Hamas and the PA in a film about a village that has little or nothing to do with them. Ironically, if the IDF and the settlers get their way, the residents of Masafer Yatta will be moved to refugee camps where they will certainly be more exposed to the ideas and recruitment efforts of Hamas.
At the same time, it is also outside the scope of the film to provide a history on the IDF’s role in protecting Israel and Jews, without which there would be no Jewish state, as it would be instantly overrun by anti-Semitic terror groups from Iran, Lebanon, and Gaza, including but not limited to Hamas. This is also well documented and again has little or nothing to do with the village of Masafer Yatta.
What is relevant to this film is the unlikely story of the other protagonist and director, the Israeli Jew from Beersheva, Yuval Abraham, who has received death threats because he dared to show what is happening in this tiny village, and get international recognition for it. He speaks fluent Arabic and heroically shows up for the poor villagers morning, noon, and night. There he strikes up this remarkable friendship with Basel. They talk about everything. Yuval bears witness to the suffering of the villagers. He helps them rebuild after their home is destroyed, again by the IDF, forcing a large family to live inside a cave.
I empathized a lot with Yuval. He is a lonely truth teller in a world split into neat ideological camps where ignorance and intolerance are the paramount virtues. Palestinians accuse him of being a spy. Right-wing Israelis call him a traitor. The truth is that unlike the deranged knit kippah wearing Jewish terrorists who shoot unarmed Palestinian shepherds, or IDF soldiers who shoot, paralyze and ultimately murder villagers like Harun after destroying his home, Abraham embodies the Jewish values of truth “emet” and caring about ones’ negihbors as much as any great Tzaddik I can recall learning about in Yeshiva.
There certainly was nothing anti-semitic about this film. It didn’t come across as prejudiced towards Jews or Israelis as a group. What the film is prejudiced against are the actions of the Israeli government in the West Bank. That is not anti-Semitism. I, too, am critical of this Israeli government, for many reasons, including but certainly not limited to its West Bank policies and conduct of the war in Gaza. Is former PM Ehud Barak anti-Semitic for harboring similar views? Is former Shin Bet director Ami Ayalon a raging Jew hater for publicly criticizing the Israeli government? Are the majority of American Jews, who last I checked are still mostly liberal, and the Israeli left all anti-Semites now?
What about the film 5 Broken Cameras, another Oscar-nominated Israeli-Palestinian co-production from Bilin in the West Bank? And how can we not mention the other must-see Academy Award-winning Israeli documentary from 2012, “The Gatekeepers,” which discusses the strategic and moral blunders of the occupation directly from the mouths of six senior Israeli Shin Bet (Shabak) leaders, including Ayalon?
Mayor Meiner, are these films anti-Semitic too?
The mayor of Miami Beach, in defaming “No Other Land” and labeling it anti-Semitic, should be ashamed of himself and offer a public apology to all four directors, Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, and Rachel Szor. If he doesn’t, they should consider a defamation lawsuit against him for hurting their already slim chances at a major U.S. distribution deal.
Ironically, his broadening and bending of the definition of anti-Semitism to suit his political biases is a win for actual anti-Semites everywhere. His futile attempt to use city funds and power to coerce a tiny cinematheque into not showing this film provides ammo to the actual anti Semites, reinforcing the anti-semitic trope that Jews are using their power and money to control the media. In this instance, it is no trope. It is what actually happened.
Thankfully, it failed this time.
As for the O Cinema, I do hope they give it a longer run, and when it's over, screen a film that shows other slices of the pie that is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, especially one that shows the radicalized Islamic terror groups who, in my view, remain the biggest obstacle to peace throughout the region. I haven’t seen it yet, but I hear October 8 is a film that would fit the bill. I’m glad to hear that, unlike “No Other Land,” they got a widespread distribution deal. Another good option would be an old Oscar winner, One Day in September, which depicts the 1972 Munich Olympic massacre, showing that radical Palestinian terror is nothing new. Heck, why not screen them both?
I don’t think O Cinema should be forced to screen films to balance out the politics of “No Other Land,” but Miami Beach also has no obligation to continue to lease them their space or fund them. I hope they continue to fund them regardless of their political biases. If the cinema is showing films that only tell one side of an important story, use the hundreds of millions of dollars you make in tax revenue to sponsor another cinema or screening. Nobody wins when you censor great films like No Other Land, or evict the last arthouse cinema still standing in Miami Beach. We need to provide the missing slices of the pie that lead to a fuller understanding of this complicated conflict, rather than increasing the ignorance gap. We need more great docs, more truth out into the world.
Great cities realize that places like O Cinema are tiny little bastions of liberalism, free expression, and culture in a sea of monotony and staleness. They are treasures to be preserved. Coercing or evicting the one indie theater in the city is a net loss for all residents. Miami Beach, a city that once staked its reputation on being one of the most diverse and tolerant places in the USA, is changing and growing more conservative like the rest of Florida. Regardless of the political trends of the moment, I think we can all agree that a plurality of voices is critical to a successful and dynamic city.
I remain a believer that a lot can happen behind the velvet ropes.
Come to think of it, Israel and O Cinema have something in common. They are both tiny bastions of liberalism and free expression floating around in a sea of sameness. And in the case of Israel, the sameness surrounding it is totalitarian repression. It is a testament to Israel’s inherent liberalism that a film like “No Other Land” can still be made.
I wonder how much longer this will be true?
Like in South Africa, Israelis and Palestinians can control their destiny. However, change will not happen unless we can have some kind of truth and reconciliation commission. Films like this, “No Other Land” and “October 8”, are part of that process. We need to figure out a way to get these films seen by more Israelis and Palestinians, and their supporters around the world, so they can fill their respective blind spots. They are the ones who need the courage and honesty to go beyond their victimhood narratives, and also study their oppressor narratives. For if each group can rein in its respective oppressors, there will be no more victims.
I commend the brave filmmakers who had the vision and tenacity to tell this important and difficult piece of the broader story, which is that we are both people with No Other Land. All 14 million people who live between the river and the Sea deserve equal rights. And in the meantime, the status quo of what is happening in the West Bank is neither moral nor acceptable.
After the film ended, I walked onto the streets of Miami Beach during Spring Break. It felt surreal, and I felt sad. I thought of Elie Wiesel's quote: “We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
If you want to bury your head in the sand, defame it as propaganda, and refuse to see it for whatever reason, that is your choice. But that decision does not absolve you of the sin of your complicity. If you dare to see it with your own eyes, I hope there will be a cinema near you brave enough to screen it.
This is a most amazing piece of writing; of story telling. Congratulations dear nephew. I'm so proud to share this piece with many friends. It's warm and intelligent and kind and thoughtful. And passionately calls out the many truths of this small area we call Israel or Palestine or both
Beautifully written. Have to see it.