- Miami Beach Mayor Steven Miner has vowed to evict and stop future grant payments to nonprofit O Cinema after the screening
- Miner's accusations of 'one-sided propaganda' and anti-Semitism have sharpened the debate over pro-Palestinian activism
WASHINGTON: Miami Beach Mayor Steven Miner said Wednesday he has backed down on his threat to evict an art-house movie theater from city property for showing the Oscar-winning film “No Other Land” about Israel's displacement of a Palestinian community in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
The move comes after numerous human rights advocates and artists have criticized Miner's threat in recent days, saying it would violate free speech.
Miner previously said he was trying to evict and stop future grant payments to the nonprofit O Cinema in South Beach.
City commissioners were scheduled to vote Wednesday on a resolution introduced by Miner and released last week.
At the meeting, the majority of the seven commission members said they were against the resolution, as did dozens of people gathered.
Miner said he would introduce another resolution to encourage O Cinema to show films that provide a “fair and balanced view of the current war,” and that it would be deferred to a later meeting.
Miner called the film “one-sided propaganda” and anti-Semitic. The film's co-directors, Palestinian activist Basel Adra and Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham, rejected accusations of anti-Semitism.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and other civil rights groups condemned Miner's earlier threat as an attack on free speech.
Despite winning the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, No Other Land was rejected by major American distributors.
The film shows Israeli soldiers demolishing homes and evicting residents to create a military training ground, as well as Jewish settlers encroaching on a Palestinian community.
The directors accused Washington of blocking a solution to the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the latest bloodshed of which has come with Israel's ongoing devastating military assault on Gaza following a deadly Hamas attack in October 2023.
