'No other land' won an Oscar last night. Here's why that's dangerous.

Last night, as the 97th Academy Awards draped Hollywood in smug applause, a grotesque travesty unfurled: "No Other Land" seized Best Documentary Feature.

Shot from 2019 to 2023 in Masafer Yatta—a rugged patchwork of 19 Palestinian hamlets in Judea's South Hebron Hills—it’s a grim chronicle of Israeli demolition. It opens with a cute innocent little Palestinian boy, Basel Adra, narrating over shaky footage: his village’s homes crumple under bulldozers, dust choking the air. We see kids—some as young as five—sobbing as their school, a concrete slab with donated desks, is flattened by IDF machines in 2021. Families scramble to caves, hauling salvaged blankets and pots.

A pivotal scene: Harun Abu Aram, a shepherd, confronts soldiers in January 2021 over a generator—seconds later, a gunshot cracks, he collapses, paralyzed from the neck down. Another: Adra’s father, beaten by settlers in 2022, limps home, blood streaking his face. Protests flare—tear gas blooms, rocks fly, soldiers fire rubber bullets. It ends with a 2023 sweep: 1,200 Palestinians displaced, per Adra’s count, Masafer Yatta a ghost land for an IDF training zone.

Directed by a Palestinian-Israeli quartet—Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, and Rachel Szor—it’s sold as unflinching truth.

But here's the problem.

It's not the truth. It's just more vicious anti-Jewish anti-Israel hatred and propaganda, dressed up as a movie. In fact, it’s a surgical hatchet job. What happened to the creators covering Hamas’s 4,000 rockets on Israeli civilians in 2021 alone? What happened to the Israeli Supreme Court’s May 2022 ruling—after 20 years of legal wrangling—deeming the area a firing zone due to its sparse pre-1967 use? Or to the tangle of a war? Instead, Israel’s a faceless tyrant—soldiers mute and brutal, settlers torching olive trees with glee, Palestinians saintly victims. The filmmakers’ Oscar speech piled on, blasting “apartheid” and U.S. arms—$3.8 billion yearly—while Hamas’s tunnels and Iranian millions got a free pass.

Obviously, and it goes without saying, there have been tragic losses in Gaza. I'm not undermining the human tragedy and the apocalyptic scenes we have seen there, either. As with any conflict, there are always going to be people caught in the crossfire, though October 7th has taught me that the concept of uninvolved Gazans is not nearly as true or rampant as I had hoped, if it even exists at all.

But let's put that to the side for now.

The timing of the movie release and giant Oscar reward is telling, too.

With Jews knifed in Amsterdam’s alleys, synagogues torched in Montreal, and students hounded on campuses from Columbia to Oxford, this Oscar win isn’t a salute to art. It’s a disgrace, a reckless sanctification of a one-sided diatribe that smears Israel—and, inevitably, Jews everywhere.

The numbers don’t lie: antisemitism isn’t a ghost; it’s a rampage. The Anti-Defamation League tracked a 140% surge in U.S. antisemitic incidents in 2024—over 10,000 cases—with physical assaults up 45%. Europe’s a battlefield: France counted 1,200 anti-Jewish attacks in 2024’s first half, a 300% leap since October 7, 2023. The UK’s Community Security Trust logged 2,400 incidents—synagogues defaced, Jews pummeled in London daylight. November’s Amsterdam pogrom saw Israeli soccer fans chased by knife-wielding mobs, five hospitalized, a city shamed. This isn’t “policy debate.” "No Other Land" is just more fuel for the war on Jews. Which is in full force, with cries of 'Globalize the intifada' all over the world, and ensuing violence, reminiscent of Poland cicra 1938.

When Jews are already prey globally, framing Israel as a genocidal machine doesn’t “educate.” It arms every punk with a grudge. X ignited post-win: “Zionist war crimes,” “ethnic cleansing”—slurs a breath from “Jews deserve it.” The Algemeiner warned last week: casting Israelis as “ruthless land thieves” doesn’t mend—it maligns. And when hatred’s boiling—synagogue attendance down 20% in some U.S. cities from fear, per Jewish security reports—that’s not just blind. It’s lethal.

Really, you say. It's just a movie after all. Why are you getting so upset?

Well, here's why. Life imitates art, as art imitates life. Which means that in 2025, Jews are barring synagogue doors, hiding kippahs on trains, drilling kids on escape routes.

Yet Hollywood cheers, crowning a film that could’ve been Hamas’s storyboard. We see Adra filming his mother weeping as their sheep pen’s crushed; Abraham, the Israeli Jew, nods gravely, decrying his own nation’s “crimes.” Distributors balked for months—too toxic—until Cinetic Media grabbed it for a limited run, despite its 100% Rotten Tomatoes and wins at Berlinale and Gotham. Wise hesitance: no big studio wanted this taint. But the Academy? They’ve baptized it, and the fallout’s roaring.

Adra and Abraham play martyrs—Abraham’s Oscar sob story leaned on his Holocaust-survivor lineage while peddling this venom. Spare us. If “antisemitic” backlash shocks you, try not painting your people as architects of atrocity. This isn’t “as-a-Jew” guts—it’s treachery in pious drag. It’s working: a clip of Abu Aram’s shooting hit 1.2 million views on X, each share a brick in Jew-hatred’s wall, a green light for the next synagogue smashing or Jew-bashing.

who’s popping champagne for this travesty? Big names, of course—Hollywood’s bleeding hearts who’d rather signal virtue than face facts. Mark Ruffalo, the Hulk himself, was all over X pre-win, hyping "No Other Land" as “a must-see truth bomb”—no shock from a guy who’s spent years tweeting pro-Palestinian rants.

Susan Sarandon, ever the activist, reportedly gushed at a pre-Oscar event about its “raw power,” per industry whispers—ironic for someone who’s dodged accountability for her own divisive stances. Posts on X claim Ben Stiller was “screaming in the hallway” with glee when it won, a nauseating image if true—Mr. Zoolander trading comedy for complicity. Even Gal Gadot’s presence at the ceremony got twisted into a smug “she had to watch it win” narrative on X—never mind her Israeli roots; the irony’s too delicious for the mob to resist.

Natalie Portman, quiet but known for her left-leaning leanings, likely toasted it privately—her Harvard polish doesn’t hide her predictable politics. These A-listers didn’t just like it—they celebrated it, flaunting their moral superiority while Jews duck for cover. Their applause isn’t brave—it’s a betrayal, amplifying a film that’s already a loaded gun in a world itching to pull the trigger.

Enough. Just because it got a big shiny golden Oscar doesn't mean you have to buy it. It isn’t art; it's a vicious knife in the heart of Jews everywhere. It’s a spit in the eye of every Jewish family grieving, every kid scared to wear a Magen David. Call it out for what it is: a shameful, dangerous disgrace. If it spurs one more attack, one more slur, one more shattered life—that blood’s on their gilded hands.