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With ‘Let It Be Morning’ and ‘Cinema Sabaya,’ Israeli filmmakers are winning awards for portraying Palestinian stories
(JTA) — Years ago, the Israeli filmmaker Orit Fouks Rotem took a class led by director Eran Kolirin, best known as the maker of “The Band’s Visit.” This month, movies by both filmmakers are getting theatrical rollouts in the United States.
On a recent Zoom call, Palestinian author Sayed Kashua joked: “Was that his class — how to use a Palestinian story?”
Kashua was smiling on Zoom as he said it — he is, after all, known for his often fatalistic sense of humor, particularly when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And the author had given his blessing for Kolirin to make an adaptation of his novel “Let It Be Morning,” and said he loved the final result.
But like most jokes, this one had a kernel of truth: Israel’s two most recent Oscar submissions, hitting New York’s Quad Cinema within a week of each other, both — to varying degrees — tell Palestinian stories.
“Let It Be Morning” is a dark comedy about an Arab Israeli village that has suddenly and with no explanation been cordoned off from the rest of the country by the Israeli military. This event forces its Palestinian residents, including a protagonist trying to return to his comfortable middle-class life in Jerusalem, to reckon with how their dignity as citizens has been denied to them by the mechanisms of the Israeli occupation. At the Quad, the film is accompanied by a retrospective of Kolirin’s work, including “The Band’s Visit,” the basis for the Tony Award-winning musical; the retrospective is sponsored by the Israeli consulate in New York.
The all-female cast of “Cinema Sabaya,” a mix of Jewish and Arab actresses, in a film directed by Orit Fouks Rotem. (Courtesy of Kino Lorber)
The following week will see the opening of Rotem’s film, “Cinema Sabaya.” It follows a group of eight women, some Jewish and some Arab and Palestinian, who bond with each other while taking a filmmaking class in a community center in the Israeli city of Hadera. Cast member Dana Ivgy, who plays the class’s instructor, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the filming experience “felt like how living in Israel should feel,” adding, “We have more women in the film than in the Israeli government.”
Stylistically, the two films couldn’t be more different. “Let It Be Morning” is a tightly plotted narrative with boldly realized characters; almost all of its dialogue is in Arabic. “Cinema Sabaya” is a loose, heavily improvisational piece that is almost entirely set in one room, and is mostly in Hebrew (although in one tense early scene, the characters debate whether to conduct their class in Hebrew or Arabic). One is a dry, Kafkaesque satire; the other is an intimate, naturalistic drama.
But together, the films provide a snapshot of the delicate dance Israeli filmmakers must perform in the current climate. On the one hand, these art-house directors are being feted on the international stage for their empathetic storytelling that incorporates or even centers entirely on Palestinian characters. But on the other, they’re being attacked by government officials for their perceived insufficient loyalty — and their films’ very status as “Israeli” is being questioned, too, sometimes by their own cast and crew.
“Everyone can call it what they want,” Rotem said of her film. “I’m an Israeli and it’s in Israel, but I have partners who call themselves Palestinians, and some of them call themselves Arabs, and each one defined herself. I think it’s really how it should be.”
“A film does not have an identity,” Kolirin insisted in an interview with JTA. “It is a citizen of the screen.”
Eran Kolirin accepted the award for Best Director for “Let It Be Morning” at the 2021 Ophir Awards in Tel Aviv on October 5, 2021. (Tomer Neuberg/ Flash90)
Kolirin isn’t a fan of the label “Israeli film” in this case, even though that is how “Let It Be Morning” was categorized at its 2021 Cannes Film Festival premiere; its own press notes also list Israel as the “country of production.” That Cannes screening took place shortly after Israel’s deadly conflict with Hamas that killed more than 250 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and around a dozen Israelis. The events turned Cannes into a political firestorm when the film’s Palestinian cast refused to attend the premiere.
“We cannot ignore the contradiction of the film’s entry into Cannes under the label of an ‘Israeli film’ when Israel continues to carry its decades-long colonial campaign of ethnic cleansing, expulsion, and apartheid against us — the Palestinian people,” the cast’s statement read in part.
“Each time the film industry assumes that we and our work fall under the ethno-national label of ‘Israeli,’ it further perpetuates an unacceptable reality that imposes on us, Palestinian artists with Israeli citizenship,” the statement continues, calling on “international artistic and cultural institutions” to “amplify the voices of Palestinian artists and creatives.”
Kolirin himself supported the cast’s action. He knew they were grieving over the outbreak of violence in Gaza and didn’t want to put themselves in a situation where “some politician is going to wave a flag over their head or whatever.”
What’s more, he said, the status of “Let It Be Morning” as an “Israeli” film, despite the fact that around half the crew was Palestinian, was not his decision: “The film was not submitted to Cannes as an Israeli film,” he said. “You know, you fill in the form: ‘Which were the countries that gave money?’” In this case, the answer was Israel and France.
Most of the cast later did not attend the Ophir Awards ceremony, Israel’s equivalent to the Oscars voted on by its filmmaking academy, where “Morning” won the top prize (which automatically made it Israel’s Oscar submission for that year). In solidarity at the awards, Kolirin read aloud a statement from his lead actress, Juna Suleiman, decrying Israel’s “active efforts to erase Palestinian identity” and what she called “ethnic cleansing.”
Orit Fouks Rotem (Courtesy of Kino Lorber)
“Cinema Sabaya” hasn’t played host to as much offscreen controversy, but its vision of Israeli multiculturalism is still inherently political. Rotem’s mother is a local government adviser on women’s issues in Hadera, and the film was inspired by her experience participating in a photography class designed to unite Jewish and Arab women. Rotem herself later led filmmaking classes in a similar vein as research for “Sabaya.”
In the film, Ivgy’s character, who is modeled on Rotem, instructs her class to film their home lives, while secretly hoping to make a movie from their efforts. When her desire to do so is revealed, the women in the class feel betrayed: They thought they were just making films for themselves, not for their stories to be told by someone else.
Similarly, Rotem said that working with Arab and Palestinian actresses made her “aware to the fact that I can’t really tell their story.” Her solution was to allow the performers — some of whom are well-known activists who had to think twice about appearing in an Israeli movie — to voice their own opinions, and to establish the necessary trust to allow them to be unscripted on camera.
She theorizes that “Cinema Sabaya” has been so well received in Israel because “it doesn’t say ‘occupation, occupation, occupation.’ It says ‘humanity,’ so people are less afraid.” (She also noted that, in real life, the women who attended her filmmaking classes bristled at her initial suggestion to make a documentary about them, telling her to fictionalize their stories instead — which she did.)
Lately the Israeli government has a tendency to view its filmmaking class as agitators unworthy of national support, particularly when they make films criticizing the occupation. Former Culture Minister Miri Regev often disparaged films she thought were bad for Israel, including celebrated international hits such as “Foxtrot” and “Synonyms.” Her current successor, Miki Zohar, has already threatened the makers of a new documentary about the West Bank city of Hebron, saying the movie smears the military and that the directors might have to return government funds.
In recent years, Israel’s culture ministry has pushed two new controversial proposals: a grant program earmarked for those who make films in settlements, which are considered illegal under international law; and a form pledging not to make films “offensive” to Israel or the military that filmmakers would be required to sign in order to apply for certain grants, which many directors have likened to a loyalty oath. For years, some of the country’s largest grantmakers have required applicants to sign a form promising to represent their projects as Israeli on the national stage.
There has also been an effort among some members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new right-wing government to end funding to public broadcaster Kan, which the country’s film industry views as another attack on its free expression.
“Kan has all this dialogue,” Ivgy said. “It has Jewish and religious and Arab and Palestinian, for kids and for grownups. And nothing is taboo there. I feel that it’s very dangerous to close that option down.”
Many Israeli filmmakers are fighting back. Hundreds, including Kolirin and Rotem, have refused to sign the ministry’s pledge, and many have also protested the settlement grant program. Nadav Lapid, one of the country’s most celebrated and outspoken directors, harshly critiqued government restrictions placed on his own work in the 2021 drama “Ahed’s Knee,” which went on to win a special prize at Cannes.
Kolirin said he had recently been on a call with several Israeli filmmakers looking to further organize against artistic restrictions, and that it had given him hope. “I had this feeling of some optimism, which I didn’t have for a long time,” he said. But he didn’t mince words when discussing Israel’s new governing coalition, which he likened to “a circus of mad dogs unleashed.”
Rotem said that the current government is “very, very bad and scary,” but that it has only strengthened her resolve to make political films.
“For me, it’s also political to show women in Israel in a deep way: I mean Arabs and Jews,” she said. “Because I don’t think there are enough films that are doing that.”
For Kashua, a veteran TV writer and opinion columnist, the question of identity in Israeli and Palestinian filmmaking is even more pronounced. After a long career of trying to write about the Palestinian experience in Hebrew as a way of reaching Israelis, he left Israel for the United States in 2014, becoming discouraged by an incident in which Jewish extremists burned a Palestinian teenager alive as revenge after Palestinian terrorists kidnapped Israeli soldiers. Now based in St. Louis, he has worked as a writer and story editor on Israeli series that center on both Palestinian and Jewish stories — including the global hit “Shtisel,” which focuses on haredi Orthodox Jews, and its upcoming spinoff, along with “Madrasa,” a young-adult series about a bilingual Hebrew-Arabic school.
Israeli filmmakers choosing to center Palestinian stories can be its own radical political act, Kashua believes. He noted that the dialogue in “Morning” is almost entirely in Arabic, a language that Israel demoted from national language status in 2018 — doubly ironic as he had deliberately chosen to write his original novel in Hebrew.
“The idea that this film is ‘Israeli’ — it really contradicts the idea of Israel being a purely Jewish state,” Kashua said. He added that, while he had initially hoped a Palestinian director might have adapted his novel, he was ultimately happy with Kolirin’s approach.
“I truly love the movie, and it’s barely Orientalist,” he joked, echoing Palestinian-American intellectual Edward Said’s famous book about how a Western lens on Eastern cultures can be reductive and harmful. “Which is a big achievement for an Israeli filmmaker.”
—
The post With ‘Let It Be Morning’ and ‘Cinema Sabaya,’ Israeli filmmakers are winning awards for portraying Palestinian stories appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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What Hailey Bieber smoothies and instant matzo ball soup reveal about American Jewish taste
It has become exceedingly difficult to get a bowl of kosher matzo ball soup in my L.A. neighborhood. I’m reminded of this every few months, when a cold or a craving reminds me what we lost when Pico Kosher Deli, established in 1968 about a mile from my apartment, closed for good early in the pandemic. It’s not just the soup, of course. It’s the whole kosher deli experience — bulging pastrami sandwiches, a waitress with a notepad, frilly toothpicks.
The traditional kosher deli is dying, if not dead, and not just in L.A. Kosher Ashkenazi fare is officially passé, a cuisine category today’s balabustas — at least my millennial Modern Orthodox cohort — have abandoned. At the kosher markets, Manischewitz products are relegated to a dusty corner, the “kosher aisle” of the kosher grocer. And at surviving delis like Katz’s and Canter’s, kosher is not a religious certification. It is, simply, a nostalgia cue immediately preceding the word “style.”
Fortunately, a wave of new, smartly packaged foodstuffs capitalizing on that nostalgia has arrived to restore my Ashkenazi birthright, or at least my former sodium levels. In the years since my neighborhood deli closed, direct-to-consumer brands have launched to hawk kosher potato latke crisps, kosher matzo chips and kosher jarred charoset (lovingly named Schmutz). The newcomer that I sprung for was a kosher instant matzo ball soup called Nooish. A box of four stout, colorful soup cups arrived about a week after I ordered them online.
To find out why these shelf-stable products have taken off while delis languish, I called Nate Rosen, whose official title — creator of the consumer brands newsletter Express Checkout — obscures the coolness of his job, which largely consists of reviewing new snacks on TikTok. According to Rosen, the kosher renaissance was part of a broader surge of food startups during the pandemic, when free time and disposable income were suddenly in abundance. It was inevitable someone would find the Jewish angle on the trend.
“There’s a market for it,” Rosen said. “There’s dedicated spots for it [on shelves]. And I think especially now, people are proud to be Jewish and proud to show that off a little bit.”
Nooish’s instant soup, ready in just a couple minutes, doesn’t come with booth seating. But taste-wise, comfort-wise and deli-wise, it’s a worthy adaptation of the experience. The kneidlach — three to a cup, each a bit larger than a Ping-Pong ball and floating in a salty brown broth, hold their form but obey your spoon. (There’s no chicken, and the soup is certified pareve.) At four-for-$36, the instant soup is probably too pricey for your kid’s lunchbox, and not substantial enough for an adult meal. But in a pinch — say, a cold or a craving — it can be transporting.
If the kosher deli is out, what’s in? The answer awaited me at Hatch Kitchen, a new kosher meat restaurant, where earlier this week I watched a barista prepare a fancy smoothie. Elaborate, astonishingly expensive and often named after celebrities, fancy smoothies are an L.A. institution, the lifeblood of the influencer class. The most notorious of these drinks, the upscale grocery chain Erewhon’s Hailey Bieber smoothie, contains strawberries and dates but also vanilla collagen powder and something called sea moss gel. It costs $20.
Hatch, I was told, makes something similar, the strawberry-based “Or-gan-ic” (the middle syllable also the Hebrew word for garden), which the restaurant calls its “most viral smoothie.” No sea moss gel, but the menu touts “anti-inflammatory” ingredients that include flax seeds and hibiscus. It’s $12, which sounds like a lot if you’ve never spent $20 on a smoothie before, and like a bargain if you just did, and for that one you’d had to look a cashier in the eye and utter the name of Justin Bieber’s wife. (At Hatch, you order from an iPad.)
Hatch’s fancy smoothie — which is also a photogenic one — models the dominant trend in contemporary kosher dining: pop-culture mimicry. Across from where the Pico Kosher Deli once stood, you can order a kosher crunchwrap supreme — a Taco Bell menu item — from a Mexican street food place called Lenny’s Casita. Kosher cafes still serve bagels, but people go for the avocado toast. It’s kosher dining’s hypebeast era, if you can afford it; Lenny’s crunchwrap with beef runs $30. I’m not sure how close the knockoff is to the real thing, or whether proximity really matters. Most customers will never taste the alternative.
There’s a tension inherent in these appropriated menu items — affirming both the desirability of secular culture and the Jewish laws forbidding it. Cultural diffusion and communal retreat. Assimilation and resistance. Meanwhile, the ancestral cuisine, which emerged out of kosher dietary laws, has been simultaneously rejected and idealized. You can’t find too many kosher delis, but TikTok has popularized pickle fountains. (Wait until they find out about hamantaschen.)
I was sort of sad about this state of affairs until I spoke to David Sax, who was dismayed enough about the decline of delis to write a book about it. He explained that Jewish deli food developed as a way of transforming European deli methods and flavors, which were more often made with pork, into kosher adaptations. The corned beef sandwich was the original fancy smoothie, which means our kosher crunchwrap might become tomorrow’s matzo ball soup. The comfort food changes, but the people endure.
The post What Hailey Bieber smoothies and instant matzo ball soup reveal about American Jewish taste appeared first on The Forward.
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Hamas, Hezbollah, Terror Allies Vow to Keep Fighting Israel, Reject Regional Peace Initiatives
Hamas terrorists carry grenade launchers at the funeral of Marwan Issa, a senior Hamas deputy military commander who was killed in an Israeli airstrike during the conflict between Israel and Hamas, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in the central Gaza Strip, Feb. 7, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
Hamas and allied terrorist groups on Friday hailed the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel as a “landmark victory,” rejecting disarmament and vowing to continue fighting the Jewish state even as international efforts push to implement a regional peace plan.
Leaders of Hamas, Hezbollah, and several other Islamist terrorist groups gathered at the 34th Arab National Conference in Beirut, where speakers called for “resistance against the Israeli occupation and its expansionist projects in Palestine and the region,” Arabic-language Lebanese news outlet Al Mayadeen reported.
During the summit, terrorist leaders rejected efforts to compel them to disarm and pledged to continue fighting against Western influence across the Middle East, emphasizing the central role of weapons “in protecting national sovereignty and securing the region’s future.”
“On Oct. 7, an extraordinary act of heroism unfolded across Palestine and its borders, as people everywhere contributed in their own way to support us,” Hamas chief Khalil al-Hayya said during the conference, referring to the group’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel in 2023.
“Gaza is wounded today, but it remains steadfast, calling on everyone to stay united in the pursuit of our legitimate national goals,” the terrorist leader continued.
“Palestine will endure, just as Gaza has, despite the aggression — its land, its people, men, women, and children — and eventually, injustice will be overcome,” al-Hayya said.
” طوفان الأقصى كان رداً على محاولات طمس القضية الفلسطينية وبناء شرق أوسط جديد”
رئيس حركة حماس في #غزة خليل الحية #الميادين pic.twitter.com/tsSAc44KXY
— قناة الميادين (@AlMayadeenNews) November 7, 2025
At the Beirut gathering, Hamas and its terrorist allies praised the Oct. 7 atrocities, calling them a turning point in their fight against the “Zionist occupation.” They also opposed any attempt to divide Gaza and reaffirmed their commitment to unity.
“We emerged from this battle against the occupation with our weapons in hand. All resistance factions stood united against the aggression, and that same solidarity extended to the political front,” Palestinian Islamic Jihad chief Ziad al-Nakhala said during the conference.
“[US President Donald] Trump’s plan has set numerous obstacles and conditions that cannot be implemented,” al-Nakhala continued, referring to the US-backed peace plan aimed at ending the war in Gaza.
“لقد كانت كل فصائل المقاومة يداً واحدة في وجه العدوان وكذلك كان الحال على الصعيد السياسي ولولا ذلك لما صمدنا شهراً واحداً”
الأمين العام لحركة الجهاد الإسلامي زياد النحالة في افتتاح الدورة الـ34 للمؤتمر القومي العربي في بيروت pic.twitter.com/w71U1GNkZx
— قناة الميادين (@AlMayadeenNews) November 7, 2025
Amid international efforts to mediate the Gaza conflict and bring peace to the Middle East, Hamas and its allies said they opposed all such initiatives, opting instead to escalate violence and advance their own agenda.
At the summit, Jamil Mazhar, deputy secretary general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), called for “rejecting plans to place the Palestinian people under tutelage and opposing any attempt at demographic change” — a clear rebuke of the Gaza peace plan.
Under Trump’s plan, an International Stabilization Force (ISF) will oversee the Gaza ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and train local security forces
The ISF would include troops from multiple participating countries and would be responsible for securing Gaza’s borders with Israel and Egypt, while also protecting civilians and maintaining humanitarian corridors.
“We have gathered to renew our commitment against the Zionist enemy and its allies, and to reaffirm that the fight continues,” Mazhar said during his speech at the conference.
“Today, we must move beyond mere solidarity and slogans, and put them into practical action,” the terrorist leader continued.
During the summit, Hezbollah international relations official Ammar al-Moussawi reaffirmed the Lebanese terrorist group’s commitment to defending and supporting the “resistance in Gaza.”
“We joined the battle to support Gaza out of our conviction in the justice and righteousness of this cause, and we do not regret our decision,” al-Moussawi said.
“History shows that the resistance in Lebanon and Palestine has endured crises far graver than today’s, and the same resistance that produced those martyred leaders is fully capable of producing new ones,” he continued.
Houthi leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi also said at the conference that “the support fronts have played a key role throughout this important two-year round.”
“Hezbollah’s role is at the forefront of the support fronts, thanks to its steadfastness, pioneering and significant contributions, and immense sacrifices,” the leader of the terrorist group in Yemen said.
“The Israeli enemy, in alliance with the United States, seeks to impose a permissive formula and always place the blame on the victim,” he added.
“The Israeli enemy is attempting to disarm the weapons that protect Lebanon and the arms that have prevented it from controlling Gaza for the past two years,” al-Houthi said.
“العدو الإسرائيلي يحاول نزع السلاح الذي يحمي لبنان والسلاح الذي يُعيقه عن السيطرة على غزة على مدى عامين”
قائد حركة أنصار الله السيد عبد الملك الحوثي في افتتاح الدورة الـ34 للمؤتمر القومي العربي في بيروت pic.twitter.com/utTs6S26Wc
— قناة الميادين (@AlMayadeenNews) November 7, 2025
Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis are all backed by Iran, which provides the Islamist groups with weapons, funding, and training.
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US Rep. Elise Stefanik, Outspoken Pro-Israel Supporter, Jumps Into New York Gubernatorial Race
US Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Feb. 22, 2025. Photo: Zach D Roberts/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), one of Israel’s staunchest allies in the US Congress, officially announced on Friday that she will run for governor of New York in the 2026 election, a move that could reshape the political landscape in the Empire State.
In a campaign video released early Friday morning, Stefanik declared that she would fight to make “New York affordable and safe for families all across our great state.” She took aim at incumbent Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul’s leadership, declaring her the “worst governor in America.”
The campaign announcement video lambasted Hochul’s “failed policies” and depicted New York as a wasteland overrun by “migrant crime.”
“Our campaign will unify Republicans, Democrats, and independents to fire Kathy Hochul once and for all to save New York,” Stefanik said in a statement.
Stefanik, 41, has represented New York’s 21st Congressional District since January 2015 and has risen to national prominence as chair of the House Republican Conference. A close ally of US President Donald Trump, she has also emerged as one of the most outspoken defenders of Israel in the US House of Representatives.
During the Israel-Hamas war, Stefanik earned praise across Jewish communities for her unequivocal condemnation of Hamas’s terrorism and her efforts to hold American universities accountable for antisemitic incidents on campus. Her fiery December 2023 questioning of Ivy League presidents during a congressional hearing, in which she pressed them on their refusal to denounce calls for genocide against Jews, went viral and cemented her reputation as a defender of American Jewry.
In March, Trump withdrew Stefanik’s nomination to serve as US ambassador to the United Nations due to the Republican Party’s razor-thin margins in the House of Representatives and concerns over passing legislation.
Though most polls indicate that Hochul maintains a lead over Stefanik, a recent survey by the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, shows the conservative firebrand leading Hochul 43 percent to 42 percent in a head-to-head matchup.
Hochul issued a pithy retort to Stefanik’s attacks.
“My message to Trump’s ‘top ally’ – bring it on,” Hochul said on X.
Though New York remains a heavily Democratic state, her candidacy could energize conservatives across upstate and suburban regions, particularly amid voter discontent over crime, migration, and the state’s economy. However, skeptics suggest that her status as a close Trump ally could capsize her candidacy in a historically blue state.
Pro-Israel groups have long considered Stefanik one of their strongest allies on Capitol Hill. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and other advocacy organizations have praised her leadership on anti-BDS legislation and support for US military aid to Israel. In April, she introduced the Countering Hate Against Israel by Federal Contractors Act, which would bar entities that boycott Israel from doing business with the US federal government.
Stefanik’s quest to become governor comes as Zohran Mamdani, an anti-Israel activist and member of the far-left Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), prepares to become mayor of New York City following his election victory on Tuesday. Stefanik lambasted Hochul recently after the governor issued a formal endorsement of Mamdani, claiming that Hochul aligned herself with Mamdani’s alleged antisemitism. If Stefanik were to become governor, she could potentially serve as a critical bulwark in thwarting any anti-Israel policies from Mamdani’s office.
If elected, Stefanik would become the first female Republican governor of New York.