A battle is brewing at Miami Beach over a local theater’s showing of a documentary about Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the West Bank, “No Other Land,” that has drawn boycotts from both Israelis and Palestinians. Now the theater’s lease and public funding is at stake. 

The drama began last week when the mayor of Miami Beach, Steven Meiner, sent a letter to the chief executive of South Beach’s O Cinema, Vivian Marthell, urging her to reconsider the theater’s scheduled screenings of the film. 

In his letter, Mr. Meiner denounced the documentary as “a false one-sided propaganda attack on the Jewish people that is not consistent with the values of our City and residents,” which, he notes, boasts “one of the highest concentrations of Jewish residents in the United States.” The mayor added that the documentary is “so egregiously antisemitic” that it has drawn condemnations by “several foreign governments, including Germany” and failed to find a distributor in America. 

Ms. Marthell initially granted the mayor’s request, canceling the shows “due to the concerns of antisemitic rhetoric,” she stated. Not soon after, though, Ms. Marthell reversed course. She told the Miami Herald that the decision to put the film back in the lineup was “not a declaration of political alignment,” but rather a “bold reaffirmation of our fundamental belief that every voice deserves to be heard, even, and perhaps especially, when it challenges us.”

The re-added screenings quickly sold out thanks to the additional press attention surrounding the mayor’s request. The theater has since added two more showing dates later in March. 

Mr. Meiner retaliated this week by proposing legislation to terminate the theater’s lease and to claw back tens of thousands of grant funding. The cinema rents its space from the city’s old City Hall building and has received $25,831 in grants from the city in recent months. Mr. Meiner is seeking to prevent the theater from receiving its second agreed grant of  $54,071. 

“I am a staunch believer in free speech,” Mr. Meiner said  in his weekly newsletter. “But normalizing hate and then disseminating antisemitism in a facility owned by the taxpayers of Miami Beach, after O Cinema conceded the ‘concerns of antisemitic rhetoric,’ is unjust to the values of our city and residents and should not be tolerated.” 

The mayor noted that he hopes to replace the O Cinema with “a cultural partner that better aligns with our community values,” adding that “it is important to work with organizations that reject any form of hatred, including against the Jewish people and the State of Israel.” 

The film, which recently won the Academy Award for best documentary, was directed by a Palestinian-Israeli collective and showcases the plight of Palestinians living in the West Bank. The directors say they made the film “because we desperately want to stop the Israeli-led ongoing ethnic cleansing of the community of Masafer Yatta, and because we want to resist the reality of Apartheid we were born into — from opposite, unequal, sides.” 

Its premiere drew criticism from both Israeli officials and Palestinian activists — for very different reasons. 

Israel’s Culture Minister, Miki Zohar, condemned the filmmakers for choosing to “amplify narratives that distort Israel’s image” and lambasted the film as “sabotage” against the Jewish state “especially in the wake of the October 7th massacre and the ongoing war.” Israel’s consul general at Los Angeles, Israel Bacher, suggested that viewers watch footage from Hamas’s October 7 attack which shows them “slaughtering entire families, kidnapping the elderly and infants, and committing every crime against humanity,” he wrote on X. “That is the real documentary!”

The film also drew ire from the German commissioner for culture and the media, Claudia Roth, who called it “shockingly one sided and characterized by deep hatred of Israel.” Berlin, on its city website, describes “No Other Land” as “exhibiting antisemitic tendencies.”

Following the documentary’s Oscar win, the Mount Hebron Regional Council released footage that appeared to show the film’s two directors pestering and harassing a group of Israel Defense Forces soldiers stationed in the area. “This scene is described in the film as ‘settler violence and IDF cruelty in Massafer Yatta.’ In reality, it was just a planned, staged provocation and harassment of IDF soldiers in IDF Firing Zone 918,” the regional council stated. 

On the flip side, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel encouraged its supporters to reject the documentary to prevent “using normalization to whitewash genocide.” The boycott divestment sanctions movement, which it endorses, “has always fought against normalization as a powerful weapon employed by oppressors to whitewash their crimes, to colonize the minds of the oppressed, and to undermine global solidarity with the struggle to end oppression,” the group stated. 

The founder of the hard-line anti-Israel group Within Our Lifetime offered a similar take, accusing “No Other Land” of serving “a soft Zionist function — exposing certain injustices while still legitimizing Zionist presence as part of the narrative, rather than centering decolonization and Palestinian liberation on our own terms.” 

Mr. Meiner’s efforts to block the film’s screening have been criticized by free speech activists, including the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which warned, “Screening movies to make sure they conform to local censors’ tastes is a practice we left behind with the Red Scare.” 

Even so, the mayor has received support from the Miami Beach City Commissioner, David Suarez, who told the Herald, “A religious Jew was voted as Mayor, along with a Zionist city council. Unlike other cities, we have zero tolerance for pro Hamas/terrorist propaganda.” Mr. Suarez further promised, “The City of Miami Beach will continue to stand up for our Jewish population, home to holocaust survivors, and while most people use ‘Never Again’ as a platitude, we mean it.”

Miami Beach’s city commission is expected to vote on Mr. Meiner’s proposal next week.