A Dutch Theater Dropped Its October 7 Screening of 'NAZA.' The Real Question Is What It Never Showed.

Oded Nir, a member of the consulting board of the Israel Defense and Security Forum, known as Habithonistim, put it bluntly to JNS: the choice reflects indifference in Western Europe to Israeli casualties. Nir is an Israeli musician who lived in the Netherlands for 19 years before returning to Israel last year, so he knows the country he is describing. Delft, he said, is "a quiet and picturesque place." Then he reached for Jabotinsky's "Shir Betar": "Quiet is squalid, an abandonment of blood and soul."

Here is what deserves attention in this story. No ministry intervened. No embassy filed a protest. The pressure that moved a date came from viewers typing on a Facebook page. That is a modest victory, but it is a real one, and it says something hopeful: even in a Dutch university town, October 7 still functions as a line that ordinary people can hold. The anniversary remains the one point of consensus that a cultural institution cannot openly trample.

The anniversary remains the one point of consensus that a cultural institution cannot openly trample.

Now the part nobody is talking about. JNS notes that Lumen has previously screened "No Other Land," "The Voice of Hind Rajab" and "Palestine 36." Add "NAZA" and that is four films built on the indictment of Israel. In the same period, the theater did not advertise a single one of the recent films that carry the Israeli story: "We Will Dance Again," "Screams Before Silence," "One Day in October," "Of Dogs and Men." Four to zero. The scandal is not one documentary. It is a one-way screen.

That changes the ask. Demanding that "NAZA" be canceled would hand its promoters the story they crave: censorship, martyrdom, a theater under siege. It would also lose. The stronger demand, and the one every Jew can sign regardless of what they think of Abraham's film, is simpler: program the other reel. Put "We Will Dance Again" on October 7. Let the audience of Delft see the Nova field before it sees the accusation. A theater that calls itself a house of cinema has no honest reason to refuse.

This is the Jewish way of fighting a cultural battle. We do not ask for silence; we insist on being heard. Delft is quiet and picturesque, as Nir says. The people who wrote on that Facebook page were not quiet. From Amsterdam to Brooklyn, that is the model: not the empty seat, but the second screening.