Bisan Owda, a Palestinian journalist currently reporting her experience living through genocide in Gaza on social media, and AJ+ have won an Emmy in the Outstanding Hard News feature category for their war documentary “It’s Bisan From Gaza and I’m Still Alive.”
“This award is testimony to the power of one woman armed only with an iPhone who survived almost a year of bombardment,” said Jon Laurence, Senior Executive Producer at AJ+, upon accepting the award on behalf of Owda and the production team.
Owda chronicles her and her family’s resettlement inside Al-Shifa hospital alongside countless other Palestinian families displaced in the immediate aftermath of Israel’s genocide on Gaza: she spotlights the cruel reality forced upon Palestinian men, women, and children who live through every new day with gratitude, “because [they have] felt death hundreds of times,” as Owda reflects in the documentary.
Last month, their nomination sparked outrage among Zionist and pro-Israel supporters prompting Creative Community for Peace (CCP), a pro-Israel collective in the entertainment industry, to campaign to disqualify the documentary. The organization levied antagonization against the Emmys, alleging prior affiliations with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) should disqualify Owda and AJ+ as nominees for this recognition.
Lydia Keisling, author and contributor to NYTMag and the Cut, wrote in a post on X: “The soullessness of this attempt is breathtaking but it's also an incredible testament to the threat posed by a single young woman with an iPhone. It eats people alive that 2000-pound bombs have not been able to snuff out the power of witness and narrative.”
The CCP submitted an open letter on August 19 to the National Academy for Television and Arts and Sciences (NATAS), the organization behind the Emmys, to rescind their nomination of Owda. The National Academy for Television and Arts and Sciences, however, has publicly stood by the nomination. The academy's chief executive, Adam Sharp, stated that two separate panels of distinguished journalists concluded there was insufficient evidence to support claims made by the CCP that Owda was an affiliate of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
These external attacks arise at a time when journalists on the ground in Gaza and other war-torn regions of the world are being killed at unnerving rates — over 130 journalists have been killed in the line of fire in Occupied Palestine since Oct. 7, 2023.
Mia Brett, a professor of the legal history of antisemitism and racism in U.S. law, posted on X: “Celebrities signing a letter against a Palestinian filmmaker receiving an Emmy is disgusting. Bisan is documenting her people’s genocide. The absolutely f***ing least we can do is not condemn that documentation.”
Ahmed Hathout, a journalist for the entertainment news outlet Filfan, shared on X, calling the attack on Owda “sinister” and highlighting that “the zionist producer Marty Adelstein [signed the] letter calling the Academy to rescind Bisan Owda’s Emmy nomination.”
He continued, writing that “a journalist from Gaza documented a genocide and this privileged asshole wants to make sure they die in silence.”
On Aug. 24, Palestinian journalists Motaz Azaiza (who escaped the genocide in January), Hind Khoudary, Wael Al-Dahdouh (who also escaped the genocide in January), and Owda received nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize for their heroic reportage on the decimation of Gaza over the past 11 months.
Khoudary shared on her Instagram story that she has known for months about the nomination; her frank response was, “What Nobel Prize when my people are being slaughtered?”