Having just spent much of my evening watching the Academy Awards (thankfully, I recorded the show, so could skip the commercials and boring parts, as it ran for three hours and forty-five minutes), I had been planning to write something short on a different subject for this blog.
That plan changed when I saw the acceptance speech for Best Documentary, which went to "No Other Land," a film about the destruction of a Palestinian village in the West Bank by the Israeli military.
The men who gave the acceptance speech were Palestinian co-director Basel Adra and Israeli co-director Yuval Abraham. I'm assuming that Adra is Muslim and Abraham is Jewish, though I could be wrong about this.
Regardless, this shows the power of moving beyond narrow confines of religion to something much more universal: compassion for the suffering of our fellow human beings. This has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with opening our hearts and minds to the plight of other people less fortunate than ourselves.
After listening to so many traditional acceptance speeches tonight where an Oscar winner thanks their spouse, parents, agent, others who worked on a film, blah, blah, blah, it was refreshing to hear Adra and Abraham talk about those who are suffering grave injustice under the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, which was acquired by Israel after a brief war in 1967.
Here's a video of the acceptance speech and a transcript of those remarks that was in an email I got from Zeteo, an independent American news organization founded by ex-MSNBC broadcaster Mehdi Hasan.
BASEL ADRA
“Thank you to the Academy for the award. It’s such a big honor for the four of us and everybody who supported us for this documentary. About two months ago, I became a father, and my hope to my daughter is that she will not have to live the same life I am living now, always fearing violence, home demolitions, forced displacement that my community, Masafer Yatta, is facing every day. ‘No Other Land’ reflects the harsh reality we have been enduring for decades and still resist as we call on the world to take serious actions to stop the injustice and to stop the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people.”
YUVAL ABRAHAM
“We made this film, Palestinians and Israelis, because together our voices are stronger. We see each other. The atrocious destruction of Gaza and its people, which must end; the Israeli hostages brutally taken in the crime of Oct. 7, which must be freed. When I look at Basel, I see my brother. But we are unequal. We live in a regime where I am free under civilian law and Basel is under military laws, that destroy lives, that he cannot control. There is a different path, a political solution without ethnic supremacy, with national rights for both of our people. And I have to say, as I am here, the foreign policy in this country is helping to block this path. Why? Can’t you see that we are intertwined? That my people can be truly safe if Basel’s people are truly free and safe? There is another way. It’s not too late for life, for the living.”
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