‘Sad moment for cinema’ – Israel rips Academy Award for documentary on evictions of Palestinian squatters

The movie, about Israeli demolitions in illegal Palestinian villages, “distorts Israel’s image in the world,” the Israeli minister wrote.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Culture and Sports Minister Miki Zohar slammed the Oscar award given Sunday to a joint Israeli-Palestinian documentary that casts Israel in a “distorted” negative light.

“The Oscar win for the film ‘No Other Country’ is a sad moment for the world of cinema. Instead of presenting the complexity of our reality, the filmmakers chose to echo narratives that distort Israel’s image in the world,” Zohar posted to X.

“Freedom of expression is an important value, but turning the slander of Israel into a tool for international promotion is not creativity; it is sabotage of the State of Israel, and after the massacre of October 7 and the ongoing war, it doubly hurts,” he added.

In his acceptance speech, the movie’s chief protagonist, Basel Adra, called Israel’s actions “ethnic cleansing,” and said that he hoped that his newborn daughter “will not have to live the same life I’m living now, always fearing settlers, violence, home demolitions, and forcible displacements. We call on the world to take serious actions to stop the injustice.”

His Israeli film partner, Yuval Abraham, appealed to the American government to stop helping to “block” what he called “a different path, a political solution without ethnic supremacy, with national rights for both of our people.”

He also told the audience that “the terrible destruction of Gaza must end. The Israeli hostages who were taken in the crimes of October 7th must be released.”

Abraham has been condemned in Israel when, in acceptance speeches at previous awards ceremonies, he spoke about Gaza being devastated while not even mentioning the fact that Hamas had taken 251 hostages during its October 7, 2023, invasion of Israel, 62 of whom are still in captivity. More than half among them are known to be dead.

The film describes the efforts of Palestinian and Israeli activists to stop repeated demolitions of homes and evictions from the Masafer Yatta group of Palestinian villages in the South Hebron Hills, which are located in an official IDF firing zone — a closed military site.

The villagers have appealed several times to Israel’s highest court since 1999, when the government first issued eviction orders to Masafer Yatta residents.

In 2022, the High Court of Justice ruled that there were no legal barriers to expelling the residents to enable military training.

Since then, the Civil Administration has occasionally sent in bulldozers and men to demolish a few houses or other structures, confiscate vehicles and equipment, and issue “stop work” orders to block theexpansion of the villages, which received no permits to build due to their illegal status.

International pressure has successfully prevented any wholesale destruction of the 13 tiny communities. Only two have been taken down so far, according to the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which noted that in 2022, there were a total of 215 Palestinian households in the area, with about 1,150 people in all.

Unlike many films made in Israel, the documentary received no government support due to its negative portrayal of the country, and it is labeled officially as a Palestinian-Norwegian film.

The award for Best Documentary Film was reportedly going to be presented by Israeli actress Gal Gadot, but ultimately, it was presented by Samuel L. Jackson and Selena Gomez.