Once five Miami Beach city commissioners indicated they would not support evicting O Cinema, Mayor Steven Meiner called off his effort to kick out the nonprofit art house.
On Wednesday, Meiner withdrew his resolution seeking to cancel Miami Beach’s lease as well as grants to O Cinema after Vice-Mayor Tanya Bhatt and commissioners Laura Dominguez, Alex Fernandez, Joseph Magazine and Kristin Rosen Gonzalez gave speeches about why Miami Beach shouldn’t be booting tenants from city-owned buildings for free speech content that some politicians find offensive.
The theater is in the old Miami Beach city hall, a historic Art Deco building at 1130 Washington Avenue.
Meiner sought to cancel a two-year lease extension that the city commission granted O Cinema over the summer because the theater showed screenings of “No Other Land.”
The Oscar winning documentary chronicles life in the West Bank during the Gaza War and events that led to it. Meiner was upset that O Cinema’s leadership went ahead with the screenings after initially acquiescing to his demand not to show the film, directed by Palestinian activist Basel Adra and Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham.
Last week, Meiner condemned “No Other Land” as “a false one-sided propaganda attack on the Jewish people.”
During Wednesday’s meeting, Meiner claimed his reaction was rooted in ensuring public safety for the city’s Jewish constituents amid rising anti-Semitism across the globe because of Israel’s ongoing destruction of Palestine since Hamas terrorists killed more than 1,400 Israelis and kidnapped 240 more on Oct. 7, 2023.
“Throughout history, there’s been different excuses for hating Jews,” Meiner said. “Sometimes it’s because Jews are too successful, sometimes because they’re too poor. Now it’s the state of Israel. It doesn’t matter. Every generation it morphs into something else. It’s just a convenient excuse. And that’s what I was trying to highlight.”
Still, a majority of speakers during the meeting’s public comments voiced opposition to Meiner’s push to evict O Cinema, calling his actions government censorship.
“We saw democracy in action,” O Cinema co-founder Kareem Tabsch told The Real Deal following the meeting. “There was an outpouring of support for O Cinema, and I think Meiner did the right thing. I respect his viewpoint and decisions.…It’s not the government’s role to dictate what art organizations should be showing or not showing.”
A majority of the city commission concurred with Tabsch’s view. “The First Amendment is clear,” commissioner Fernandez said during the meeting. “The government must never censor artistic expression even when it is controversial or deeply offensive.”
Vice-Mayor Bhatt noted that O Cinema has shown more than 50 pro-Israel films by Jewish filmmakers, hosts the Miami Jewish Film Festival and screened a 12-hour documentary about the Holocaust. “To silence that voice does more damage than almost anything I can think of,” Bhatt said. “I will tell you that I’m not censoring anybody.”
