“And the Oscar (for Best Documentary Feature) goes to, ‘No Other Land,'” a Palestinian/Israeli project with Palestinian and Norwegian producers.

It’s another documentary doing what American media in particular have avoided, reporting on Israel’s brutal land-grabbing practices by focusing on four years of seizures, schemes and military operations targeting Masafer Yatta.

Now, the Jewish mayor of Miami Beach, after arm-twisting a local indie cinema into not showing the Oscar winning film, has threatened to pull grant money and in effect “evict” O Cinema from its space on city owned property for showing this important film anyway.

A lot of people have burned through a lot of outrage over the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, killing and kidnapping civilians including foreign tourists. But one can see that as a heinous act and still recognize what’s been obvious for decades and decades — that Israel is ethnically cleansing the Palestinian population of Palestine, a perverse variation of Adolf Hitler’s “Lebensraum” in all but name.

Whatever the Western news media cover from Israel’s point of view, or fear covering altogether, the facts have been laid out by plenty of others, especially in documentary films. I’ve reviewed scores of documentaries touching on this subject, with even the “Plant a Tree in Mother Israel” charity implicated in this nefarious “erasure” of Palestine and Palestinians.

Social media is overrun with declarations that being anti-Israeli/anti Netanyahu/anti-Right Wing Apartheid/land-grabbing policies does not make one anti-Semitic. That knee-jerk accusation has been trotted out so often regarding Rape of Gaza criticism as to lose its meaning.

Israel is the least popular it’s ever been in this country because of the Gaza genocide and Netanyahu’s manipulation of it to cover his government’s incompetence and interfere with American elections as he dragged out a murderous “invasion” never meant to recover hostages.

So, not a good look for Mayor Steve Meiner. He comes off like an Israeli apologist of the worst sort. He’s anti free speech in that Israel can’t be criticized for policies the world and the World Court have condemned and he’s attacking an Oscar winning movie he hasn’t seen, one made by Palestinians and Israelis and endorsed and honored by disproportionately Jewish Hollywood.

What a putz.