After the dishonest anti-Israel documentary No Other Land won an Oscar, the Israel-haters were anything but unanimous in celebrating its victory. In fact, many have opposed the film and criticized the Oscars speech.
One such hater was antisemitic terror supporter Nerdeen Kiswani, who ranted on X following the Oscars:
The reason Kiswani and others attacked the film and the speech is because it somehow promotes normalization between Arabs and Jews. They do not want us living side-by-side in peace and security. They want to supplant us here – and yes, that would certainly involve terror and violence.
But don’t think this is just the very extreme of the Israel-haters. Yesterday, the BDS Movement published the same sentiments on their website.
But here’s the catch: they did so only on their Arabic website, clearly because they want to come across as “reasonable” to a Western audience.
Here’s an auto-translation of the article as it appears on the BDS Arabic site:
The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) position on the film “No Other Land”
The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) – the organization mandated by the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) to monitor and promote the development of anti-normalization standards – has received numerous inquiries about its position on the film “No Other Land,” both before and after it won the Oscar. There is a heated debate about the film, which has become more widespread since its Oscar win.
The campaign recognizes the importance of engaging in this debate, but with an eye to the moral responsibility to maintain the centrality of the struggle to end the genocide perpetrated by the Israeli enemy, in partnership with the colonial West led by the United States, against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza, and the brutal aggression and ethnic cleansing in the refugee camps in the West Bank and in Jerusalem. The campaign also emphasizes the importance of placing this debate, and all similar debates, in the context of the priorities of our struggle against the Israeli regime of settler-colonialism, apartheid and military occupation, which has been in place for more than 76 years against the entire indigenous people of Palestine.
Since the screening of the film “No Other Land,” Israel—along with its huge lobby groups and its racist partners who support its crimes against the Palestinian people in Western cultural institutions, particularly in the United States and Germany—has launched a fierce campaign against the film and tried to prevent its screening because it saw it as exposing an important, if partial, dimension of its decades-old colonial system that the Palestinian people suffer from and resist in various ways. It also saw that shedding light on some of its war crimes, such as the ethnic cleansing in Masafer Yatta, would strengthen the already unprecedented global support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which Israel considers a “strategic threat.”
It is important to point out here that the attack by the fascist Israeli government and its tools on any artistic work that violates the standards of the boycott movement agreed upon in Palestinian society cannot be considered a primary criterion for deciding whether or not the boycott movement will launch a campaign to boycott this work. The spirit of the boycott and anti-normalization standards stems from defending the rights of the Palestinian people with the aim of dismantling the system of colonialism, apartheid and occupation and achieving the right of return, liberation and justice, and focusing on the strongest and most effective ways to achieve these goals. Accordingly, and based on the limits of its human capabilities, the campaign carefully chooses, according to standards tested over two decades, the most important targets against which it launches effective campaigns, versus the less important targets against which it does not launch campaigns.
On the other hand, a significant number of Arab artists, especially Palestinians, and many international activists criticized the film as a case of normalization, and some called for a boycott of the film accordingly.
In light of the above, what is the position of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement?
First, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) came to the conclusion from the outset that this film violates, in several respects, the agreed-upon anti-normalization standards of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement has long opposed normalization as a powerful weapon used by oppressors to colonize the minds of the oppressed, cover up their crimes, and undermine global solidarity with the struggle to end the entire system of oppression.
Regardless of intentions, and according to the definition of normalization agreed upon by the overwhelming majority of Palestinian society in the homeland and diaspora, normalization is participation in any project, initiative, or activity, local or international, that brings together (on the same “platform”) Palestinians (and/or Arabs) and Israelis (individuals or institutions) and does not meet the following two conditions:
- That the Israeli side recognizes the basic rights of the Palestinian people under international law (at a minimum, the right of return of refugees and the end of the occupation and apartheid system),
- And that the activity constitutes a form of co-resistance against the Israeli regime of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid.
The Close-UP initiative contributed to the production of the film “No Other Land,” a normalization initiative that aims to normalize relations between Arab and Israeli filmmakers. Consequently, a large number of Arab filmmakers, along with the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), called for a boycott of it.
In addition, some of the Israeli members of the film crew did not recognize some of the basic rights of the Palestinian people. Moreover, they did not take any positions that acknowledge Israel’s commission of the crime of genocide against our people in the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip since the beginning of the genocide. They went on to declare offensive and immoral positions that contribute to the false equality between the colonizer and the colonized, which allows them to be used to justify the genocide committed by Israel. The above leaves no room for doubt that the film violates the standards of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against normalization.
The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) is aware that the film crew, immediately after winning the Oscar, and in the face of mounting criticism, issued a statement explicitly mentioning the Nakba, ethnic cleansing, settler colonialism and apartheid, and demanding “justice for Palestinian refugees,” which represents a serious step toward addressing the major problems mentioned above. However, the statement did not mention Israel as the party committing all these crimes.
Second, in addition to the above, and in addition to the criteria of boycott and anti-normalization, it is worth emphasizing that we as Palestinians do not need permission or “legitimization” from Israelis to narrate our history, present, experiences, dreams, and resistance, including artistic resistance, to the colonial oppression that denies us our freedom and inalienable rights. Therefore, it becomes imperative for us to challenge the racist conditions, whether covert or overt, imposed by the colonial West and its dominant institutions, which do not give a platform to Palestinians except with permission or “legitimization” from an Israeli side.
But why has the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) not made this position public until now?
The campaign has not made its position on the film public, but has shared it with several filmmakers and festival organizers who have inquired over the past year.
The interaction around this documentary is a positive and healthy indicator of the growth of the anti-normalization movement among the people, and we as a movement are proud of that. On the other hand, it should be noted that the BDS movement prioritizes targeting the most complicit parties, and those who can achieve a greater impact on our liberation journey by targeting them, in line with the principle of “strategic radicalism,” while being guided by our principles and main goal of ending international complicity with the colonial system and strengthening the struggle waged by our people, along with the free people of the world, for justice, liberation, return, and self-determination. Therefore, the campaign does not publish, and does not have the ability to follow up and publish, a position on every case of normalization.
Over the past 17 months of Israeli-American genocide against our people in Gaza, the BDS movement, including the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) and all its partners and networks, has been leading, organizing and supporting a number of strategic campaigns to break the chain of international complicity (by governments, corporations and institutions) with the genocide and with the Israeli colonial system as a whole, in the economic, military, academic, cultural, sports and other spheres. A crucial aspect of this struggle focuses on combating colonial narratives that dehumanize Palestinians and confronting racist stereotypes promoted by Israel and its partners.
Given the multitude of cultural boycott projects around the world that the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) has had to lead or support during this ongoing genocide, the campaign did not consider No Other Land a priority before the Oscars. Now, given the film’s growing popularity, particularly following its Oscar win, the campaign felt it necessary to clarify the ways in which the film violates anti-normalization norms, in order to fortify our collective understanding of normalization and its dangers, and to protect our struggle from attempts to use normalization to whitewash genocide. The end does not justify any immoral means.
Hollywood has dehumanized Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, Black people, Indigenous peoples, and others for decades. For example, dozens of Palestinian filmmakers wrote in an open letter published during the genocide, “We are outraged by the inhumanity and racism shown by some in the Western entertainment industry toward our people, even during these most difficult times.” Dehumanization is one of the factors that enables and facilitates Israel’s genocide. This is why many celebrated the documentary as a work that, at least in part, champions Palestinian rights and helps counter the dehumanization of Palestinians, while overlooking the problem of normalization that lies within it.
Finally, our struggle, which is based on principles and is gradual in its pursuit of goals, is based on thousands of collective, principled and purposeful efforts that come together on many fronts. In this struggle, it is our moral obligation not to compromise the rights of our people, whatever the context. Working strategically, we must prioritize our most important goals in order to expand our reach and build popular power to achieve those rights. The indigenous Palestinians have no other land than Palestine. But we must certainly find other, non-normalized paths to our struggle for liberation and self-determination.
This statement is currently linked to from the current front page of the BDS Arabic site in Arabic, while it is nowhere to be found on the BDS site in English.
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