It was a historic Jewish night at the Oscars. Why are so many Jews outraged?
Israeli director Yuval Abraham, condemned Oct. 7 and called for the release of hostages. Many said it wasn’t enough.
Basel Adra, left, and Yuval Abraham, winners of the best documentary feature award for No Other Land, holding their Oscars. Photo by Monica Schipper/Getty Images
By Louis Keene March 3, 2025
The 97th Academy Awards was a banner night for Jews in Hollywood. Adrien Brody and Mikey Madison won the Oscars for best actor and best actress, the first time in decades that Jewish actors have swept that category; best supporting actor went to the co-star of a film about Jewish cousins who tour Majdanek; and The Brutalist, a film about a Holocaust survivor’s experience of antisemitism in America, won for cinematography and score.
Yet in Jewish online spaces, few appeared to be celebrating these achievements. Instead, the prevailing mood was one of outrage.
The primary source of frustration was No Other Land’s win for Best Documentary and its creators’ acceptance speeches, which criticized Israel and called for the release of hostages while advocating for “national rights for both of our people.”
Frustration with their message overwhelmed any positivity that might have come from a film’s Palestinian and Israeli co-directors rallying for peace.
Co-directed by Basel Adra, a Palestinian, and Yuval Abraham, an Israeli, No Other Land depicts settler violence and home demolitions in Adra’s West Bank village of Masafer Yatta.
In his acceptance speech Sunday, Adra called for an end to “the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.”
“About two months ago I became a father, and my hope to my daughter: that she will not have to live the same life I am living now,” he said. “Always feeling settler violence, home demolitions and forceful displacement that my community, Masafer Yatta, is living and facing every day under the Israeli occupation.”
He added, “We call on the world to take serious actions to stop the injustice.”
Abraham, while assailing the “crime of Oct. 7,” said the U.S. government had exacerbated conflict in the region. Both called for partnership and peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
Their comments drew spirited applause in the Dolby Theatre, and caused “Free Palestine” to trend on X. But Jewish accounts on the platform largely sought to discredit the film and its creators.
One widely circulating post complained that the directors had blasted Israel for the destruction of Gaza, but had not mentioned Hamas by name. Another questioned the sincerity of their call for peace given that none had worn a hostage pin.
The Israeli writer Noa Magid said Abraham was part of a “radical minority” in Israel.
“I am ashamed of this man,” Magid wrote. “He is not my brother — and he never will be.”
“The world continues to coddle Palestinians,” wrote pro-Israel influencer Eyal Yacoby.
“Congratulations to HAMAS for its Oscar win,” wrote conservative commentator John Podhoretz.
A Jewish observer of the pro-Israel Oscars reaction called it a “meltdown.”
The top-voted post on Reddit’s r/Jewish forum Monday, titled “The Oscars tonight, just wow,” described being “fed up with the pro-Pali bullshit” coming from “privileged celebrities.”
For many Jewish influencers, the problem was as much what the award-winners didn’t say as what they had.
“Kieran Culkin won an Oscar for a Holocaust movie and literally didn’t say a fucking thing about Jew hate or the Holocaust. Disgusting,” wrote the Jewish influencer Zach Sage Fox, adding a middle-finger emoji. “I’m so sick of stars using the Holocaust to win awards and then not even mention Jews when they do. Our pain is not your product.”
Even Brody, who did bring up antisemitism in his award speech, ran afoul of some Jewish accounts.
“I’m here once again to represent the lingering traumas and the repercussions of war and systematic oppression and of antisemitism and racism and of othering,” Brody had said.
A reply to the r/Jewish post compared his coupling of antisemitism with other forms of hatred to saying “All Lives Matter,” a phrase seen as diminishing the Black community’s experience of racism.
“He mentioned winning his second Oscar for portraying a Holocaust survivor and briefly mentioned antisemitism, but then quickly ‘all lives mattered’ it,” read one reply on the Reddit post. “I really wanted to see him speak unequivocally against Jew hatred.”
“And then commented how ‘lovely’ Jew-hater Guy Pearce is,” added another. (Pearce, Brody’s co-star, flashed a dove-shaped “Free Palestine” pin on the red carpet.)
Not all pro-Israel influencers were reading the No Other Land speeches as bad faith.
“Were they harsh when they talked about the Israeli government? It depends who you’re asking,” said Hen Mazzig, arguing that the directors had not downplayed Oct. 7. “Empathy isn’t a zero-sum game. It’s important to remember that not every disagreement or hard conversation is hate speech.”
Meanwhile, pro-Palestinian accounts — which gloated that Gal Gadot reportedly bowed out of presenting the documentary category — were attacking Abraham, too.
One post on X called the Israeli director a “liberal Zionist and occupier who doesn’t even support the Palestinian right to resistance.”
The controversy surrounding the film dismayed Arash Azizi, a columnist for The Atlantic, who wrote, “It’s called pro-Hamas by one set of extremists and denounced as ‘wishful thinking’ and ‘rehabilitation for Zionism’ by another — as all attempts at peace and freedom in this region always will be.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story said that this year’s Oscars was the first time Jews swept the best actor and actress categories. It was the first time in decades, not the first time ever.
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