In response to calls for disqualification, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) said it stands by the Emmy nomination of Palestinian reporter Bisan Owda’s eight-minute film about surviving the Israeli attack on Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza in April, where she and thousands of others were sheltering. The backlash against Owda’s film came from the Creative Community for Peace (CCFP), a nonprofit whose stated mission is “to educate about rising antisemitism within the entertainment industry, and to galvanize support against the cultural boycott of Israel.”
The CCFP’s open letter called on NATAS to remove the Outstanding Hard News Feature Story: Short Form nomination for Owda’s film It’s Bisan From Gaza and I’m Still Alive (2023), circulating through Al Jazeera’s social media project AJ+, after alleging that the Gaza-based journalist was affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The letter provided photos of what appears to be Owda as a teenager in military garb, speaking at a PFLP event in 2015. Since October 7, Owda has posted interviews, footage, livestreams, photos, and journalistic accounts of Palestinian strife throughout Gaza amid Israeli attacks across various designated humanitarian safe zones.
The United States has regarded the PFLP as a terrorist organization since 1997, citing a variety of armed attacks and aircraft hijackings between the late 1960s through 1990 as well as active participation in the Second Intifada between 2000 and 2005. PFLP has also been accused of supplementing Hamas’s October 7 attack last year.
Signed off by the likes of Debra Messing, Sherry Lansing, David Draiman, and over 100 others in the entertainment sector, CCFP’s letter accuses NATAS of “glorifying someone who is a member of an organization that has carried our numerous aircraft hijackings, participated in the Oct. 7 massacre in Israel, carried out waves of bombings on markets and restaurants and murdered innocent women and children.”
In response published through Deadline, Adam Sharp, chief executive officer of NATAS, wrote that the Academy was aware of the reports tying Owda to the PFLP as a teenager, but “has been unable to corroborate these reports, nor has it been able, to date, to surface any evidence of more contemporary or active involvement by Owda with the PFLP organization.”
Sharp also clarified that It’s Bisan From Gaza and I’m Still Alive underwent review by two successive panels of independent judges for its nomination, and that the Academy “found no grounds, to date, upon which to overturn the editorial judgment of the independent journalists who reviewed the material.”
