Netflix Responds to Activists Criticizing Palestinian Films Removal: “Those Licenses Have Now Expired”

Netflix has responded to backlash over it removing 19 films by or about Palestinians from the streaming platform in mid-October.

In a statement, the streamer said the Palestinian Stories collection with 32 films was launched in Oct. 2021 as part of a three-year licensing deal. “Those licenses have now expired. As always we continue to invest in a wide variety of quality films and TV shows to meet our members’ needs, and celebrate voices from around the world,” Netflix said on Friday.

The decision to not renew the Palestinian stories slate as part of a content licensing deal led a coalition of human rights groups led by Freedom Forward to write an open letter to Netflix’s executive team to explain why it removed 19 films by or about Palestinians.

“We urge you to explain your decision and to reinstate every film by or about Palestinians that Netflix deleted last week. We are deeply concerned that Netflix’s deletion of nearly its entire library of Palestinian films will further marginalize Palestinian voices at a time when over two million Palestinians in Gaza are being subjected to genocide by the Israeli military,” the letter to Reed Hastings, founder and executive chairman and co-CEOs Greg Peters and Ted Sarandos stated.

After Netflix responded to the activist pushback, Sunjeev Bery, executive director of Freedom Forward, in his own statement criticized the licensing deal being allowed to expire.

“Why didn’t Netflix renew the licensing deal under which it carried these 19 Palestinian films? Netflix is a 300 billion dollar company that can afford to renew the licenses for the movies and films that it cares about. Palestinians are experiencing extraordinary suffering, and Netflix should be doing everything it can to share Palestinian stories with the world. Instead, Netflix has allowed nearly its entire library of Palestinian films to disappear,” Bery said.

Licensing deals are responsible for the shifting availability of certain movies and TV shows on Netflix and other streamers in the U.S. and other countries. For instance, Netflix famously no longer streams Friends in the U.S. after Warner Bros. snatched up the rights to that series for its Max streamer. Mr. Robot is also no longer available on Netflix in Arabic countries.

Netflix still has titles from Palestinian creators on its service. However, the sole film from the Palestinian Stories slate is the 2019 documentary Ibrahim A Fate to Define, by director Lina Al Abed.

The Freedom Forward coalition letter was also signed by Arab American Action Network, Council on American Islamic Relations, Muslim Anti-Racism Collaborative, National Network for Arab American Communities and U.S. Palestinian Community Network, among others.