Since the Israel/US alliance went into full-throttle war machine mode in the name of Israel’s right to self-defence, fissures have appeared in the global community, delineating various camps. Roughly speaking: those who support Israel, those who condemn Israel, and those who question Israel.

All three groups are being swept into an often confrontational dynamic, where bias and conditioning are challenged and moral choices are tested. A situation which demands continuous examination of reality and facts.

This is when the pivotal role of the arts, the press and the education system come into play. These pillars of society guide and underpin individual and collective processes and our growth as humanity. If expression, investigation and the dissemination of knowledge are made subservient to a political ideology we are in deep trouble.

Likewise, the separation of church and state, of justice system and government, guarantees some protection of fundamental democratic principles. The blurring and altogether melding of these powers is a recipe for authoritarianism and, ultimately, for totalitarianism.

Let me stay in the realm of the arts. Often we have seen the powers-that-be take punitive measures in response to signs of dissent. In NSW, major donors threatened to withhold grants from the Sydney Theatre Company when some actors wore a keffiyeh at curtain call in solidarity with the Palestinian victims of Israel’s genocide. In Victoria, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra was forced into cancelling a work dedicated to the hundreds of journalists and media workers killed in Gaza. Most recently, Australia’s federal funding body for the arts, Creative Australia, buckled under pressure to withdraw its decision to have Lebanese Australian artist Khaled Sabsabi represent Australia at the Venice Biennale.

The arts world, and with them the world at large, is not taking these signs of blatant censorship lying down. For example, more than 4000 Australian artists have demanded Sabsabi’s reinstatement, and many have told Creative Australia they are not willing to fill the vacancy in Venice.

Going to Hollywood now. A year ago, when filmmaker Jonathan Glazer, director of Zone of Interest, warned against dehumanisation in his Oscar acceptance speech, his words were interpreted as a stance against Israel, and therefore as antisemitic. He was booed and suffered much backlash for his “audacity”.

A year later, a few days ago, a collective of Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers received the Oscar for best documentary. No Other Land chronicles the decades-long fight by the inhabitants of Masafar Yatta, a town in the unlawfully occupied West Bank, against illegal eviction from their land by the Israeli authorities.

Previously, the film had won the Documentary Film Award in the 2024 Berlinale, where it shocked the German pro-Israel establishment, who accused its makers of, you guessed it, antisemitism. But controversy only led to more interest.

In Los Angeles March 2025, the movie’s directors, Palestinian Basel Adra and Israeli Yuval Abraham, again made some bold statements in their acceptance speech. However, this time they were enthusiastically applauded. And people in the audience wore pro-Palestine pins in their lapels, including our very own Guy Pearce.

No Other Land, is yet to be distributed in the US. Despite this, or perhaps thanks to this, it gained even more fame. For people are now showing a deep appreciation and thirst for art works like this, be they films, books or other forms of expression, as if the importance of truth telling, true story telling, has been rediscovered, together with the importance of questioning, free debate, critical analysis.

Predictably, in Israel such open-mindedness is virtually absent. Miki Zohar, its Minister of Culture and Sports, criticised the documentary’s achievement as a “sad moment for the world of cinema”.

When truth is being polluted, mangled, inverted, the thirst for truth’s sublimity is born. Life-giving water, gone underground, will create new springs elsewhere. As Palestinian biologist Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh says: “We can either destroy humanity and the environment, or we can reclaim our humanity and our earth. The choice is ours.”

An increasing number of artists, educators and journalists have made their choice. It is their “soft power” that is penetrating the bastions of white supremacy and racism, creating the cracks that are letting the light in.

In congratulating the filmmakers, here are their acceptance speeches:

BASEL ADRA: Thank you to the Academy for the award. It’s such a big honour for the four of us and everybody who supported us for this documentary. About two months ago, I became a father, and my hope to my daughter is that she will not have to live the same life I am living now, always fearing violence, home demolitions, forced displacement that my community, Masafer Yatta, is facing every day. No Other Land reflects the harsh reality we have been enduring for decades and still resist as we call on the world to take serious actions to stop the injustice and to stop the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people.

YUVAL ABRAHAM: We made this film, Palestinians and Israelis, because together our voices are stronger. We see each other. The atrocious destruction of Gaza and its people, which must end; the Israeli hostages brutally taken in the crime of October 7, which must be freed. When I look at Basel, I see my brother. But we are unequal. We live in a regime where I am free under civilian law and Basel is under military laws, that destroy lives, that he cannot control. There is a different path, a political solution without ethnic supremacy, with national rights for both of our people. And I have to say, as I am here, the foreign policy in this country is helping to block this path. Why? Can’t you see that we are intertwined? That my people can be truly safe if Basel’s people are truly free and safe? There is another way. It’s not too late for life, for the living.

Jepke Goudsmit is a Dutch Australian theatre maker. She has been co-director of Kinetic Energy Theatre Company since 1984.