Earlier this month, Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner introduced a resolution threatening to cancel the O Cinema’s lease. The theater’s crime? Showing No Other Land, a documentary about the Israeli occupation of Palestinian villages in the West Bank.…

Only time will tell if the U.S.-backed Israeli regime will ever end its war on Palestinian civilians. Regardless, the First Amendment to the United States Constitution does not come with an Israel exception. The fact that a government official is willing to marshal his power to censor speech that is critical of a foreign country, all while ignoring the use of taxpayer funds to advance controversial perspectives on domestic issues, is highly illuminating. More than anything, it reveals just how much influence the pro-Israel lobby wields over American politicians. No matter how strong the lobby appears, its true power is probably greater than even the most cynical among us can imagine.

Just last week, Yuval Abraham reported that Hamdan Ballal, the film’s other Palestinian co-director, was “lynched” by a group of Israeli settlers who attacked his home in the West Bank. He was subsequently removed from an ambulance by the IDF and spent a night being beaten by Israeli soldiers, who released him the next day.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences released an extraordinarily vague and spineless statement in response to Ballal’s assault and detention, one which failed to even mention him by name. By contrast, back in October 2011, months before that year’s ceremony, the Academy had issued a forceful condemnation of the Iranian government’s treatment of filmmaker Jafar Panahi and his peers. Hundreds of members responded to the Academy’s non-statement with their own letter decrying both the Israeli attack on Ballal and the awards body’s failure to defend one of its recent honorees.