Oscar Voters Reject Palestinian Propaganda

The Palestinian submission for the Oscar foreign film award, Palestine 36, had strong momentum from the usual anti-Israel leftists: Mark Ruffalo, Diego Luna, Susan Sarandon, Riz Ahmed, Ava Duverney, Mira Nair, and Ramy Youssef and a raft of stars lending their support. When viewed at the Toronto Film Festival, it got a 20-minute standing ovation and has a 100% rating from film critics on Rotten Tomatoes. Indie Wire film critic Ritesh Mehta writes,

Annemarie Jacir’s rigorously researched telling of the three-year anti-British revolt in Palestine starting in 1936 shines in its period and cultural specificities even if its quilt-like structure can’t always hold the weight of the powerful archive and miniature histories it draws upon.

Though one of the fifteen films shortlisted, Oscar voters chose not to nominate it for Best International Featured Film. This is fortunate since the actual history of the revolt is dramatically different than what the film presents. The film ignores its continuation of the decade-long violence against Jewish communities and, most strikingly, never mentioning the leader of the revolt, the Grand Mufti Amin al-Husseini.

In the 1920s there were a series of pogroms, the most serious occurred in 1929 when the Grand Mufi instigated violence, wiping out the Hebron Jewish community of pious Jews who had lived there for generations. Attacks on Jewish settlements continued but increased during the revolt. The film has scenes of British transferring land to Jews despite overwhelming evidence that virtually all Jewish settlement land was legally purchased.

Historian Oren Kessler documented in his book, Palestine 1936, “Twenty-one Jews were killed in the rebellion’s first month and ten more in the second.” Attacks continued until the ceasefire after 6 months of fighting. By the revolts end, 500 Jews had been killed but there are no such killings in the film as it presents only Arabs as victims of violence.

The film also ignores the dissent among Arabs as the revolt unfolded. In its early stages, the Haifa mayor was assassinated for his perceived willingness to work with Jews. When during the ceasefire, a British delegation arrived to examine the prospects for implementing the Peel partition plan, the Grand Mufti’s supporters were instructed “to kill every Arab who communicates with the commission in any form.” When he learned that one of the notables planned to testify, the Grand Mufti wrote: “Those who go to meet the partition commission should take their shrouds with them.” Indeed, Mufti supporters killed as many as a thousand Arabs to quell opposition to his political positions.

The film ignores the broad range of Palestinians who were willing to consider the Peel Commission’s recommendations. After all, though Jews were 30 percent of the population, the recommendation was that they receive only 12 percent of the British Mandate’s land with the vast majority of the remainder allocated to an Arab Palestinian state. However, for the Grand Mufti and his followers, no independent Jewish state, however small, was allowed.

The Grand Mufti is also written out of the Palestinian narrative because he continued his anti-Jew hatred when in exile, fomenting pogroms in Iraq. When forced out, he went to Berlin to aid Hitler’s war efforts, including recruiting Bosnian Muslims into the Nazi army. Indeed, after learning in 1943 of Hitler’s extermination of three million Jews, the Grand Mufti declared that Germany had “recognized the Jews for what they are and resolved to find a definitive solution for the Jewish danger that will eliminate the scourge that Jews represent in the world.” Despite these attitudes and actions in support of the Nazis, the Mufti was given a hero’s welcome when he found his way to Egypt after World War II where the Arab leadership installed him as the leader of the Arabs in Mandate Palestine.

Also written out of the film was Fawzi al-Qawuqji, a Lebanese-born Pan-Arabist who led the foreign volunteers who fought during the revolt. Like the Grand Mufti, he was a fanatic antisemite who enlisted in the Nazi Army. When freed from a Russian prison camp in 1947, he was selected by the Arab Higher Committee to head the Palestinian forces to fight the Zionists before the Arab armies entered the 1948 war.

The Grand Mufti’s murderous approach was an important reason for decisive Jewish victories when war broke out in December 1947. Many Arab leaders who rejected the Grand Mufti, were willing to collaborate with the Zionists and there was little appetite for war among large sections of the rural Muslim population. According to the anti-Zionist historian Ilan Pappé, Palestinians made up as little as 10 percent of army volunteers.

To some extent, reviewers could accept the history presented in Palestine 36 because it is consistent with those presentations in anti-Zionist sources, like the entry in Britannica. There, the Grand Mufti is barely mentioned, and there is no mention of the pogroms and ongoing violence against Jewish communities before and during the revolt. Instead, we are told, “The British permitted the Haganah to take up arms and trained its volunteers to help quell the Arab rebellion.” Never mentioning the violent suppression of Arab dissents, it states, “The revolt was the first event during the British mandate period to unite Palestinian Arabs across geographic, economic, and sociopolitical divisions.” Thus, there is little reason for reviewers sympathetic to the Palestinian cause to question the film’s historical accuracy.

Some reviewers ignore the Peel Commission’s recommendation for a large independent Arab state. Jonathan Cook’s review claims:

For the British, the impulse for liberation in Palestine had to be snuffed out at all costs. … Britons watching the film are likely not only to be shocked by the extent and nature of Britain’s colonial violence but to see in those savage events a premonition of what is now unfolding in Gaza.

While the Hollywood film community do not endorse Cook’s extreme claims, most will feel sympathy for the film to demonstrate their commitment to the Palestinian cause. Indeed, many will do so even if they could be convinced that the film has gross historical inaccuracies.

Robert Cherry is an American Enterprise Institute affiliate and author of the soon to be released book, Arab Citizens of Israel: How Far Have They Come? (Wicked Son Press, March 2026).