Shot mainly between 2019 and 2023 by Hamdan Ballal, a Palestinian farmer and photographer and Rachel Szor, an Israeli cinematographer, it relates the erasure of Masafer Yatta, a collection of Palestinian Arab hamlet, to create space for an IDF “firing zone.[1] It aroused a predictable outcry from supporters of Israel who have condemned the documentary as “antisemitic” and have congratulated “Hamas for its Oscar win”.
As depressingly certain pro-Palestinian voices such as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign and the Palestinian Academic Campaign for Boycott of Israel (PACBI) have also decried the documentary for “normalising” relations with the “Israeli Occupation.” In this fateful triangle between Israel, Palestine and artistic/intellectual enquiry, such innovative truth telling projects are subject to political purity and loyalty tests rather than being judged on artistic and humanistic grounds. As in any work of scholastic, literary or artistic dealing with the Israeli/Palestine imbroglio and or that concerning any conflict, ideological conformity should never confer any brownie points. Telling unvarnished truth (an increasingly difficult but even more difficult undertaking in the ‘post-truth’ era) and empathetic treatment of its subjects must be the hallmarks of any such endeavour; not obeisance to loyalty to partly line or received wisdom or “common sense.”
The backstory to the documentary is the designation of part of the Masafer Yatta by the Israeli authorities in the 1980s as “Firing Zone 918”, a closed military area. In 1999, the Israeli government issued eviction orders in the area for “illegally living in a firing zone”. Two decades of court battles ensued which ended in 2022 when Israel’s Supreme Court ruled the villagers could be expelled. The documentary is a collaboration between Basel Adra and three other Palestinian co-directors; Israeli journalist and activist Yuval Abraham whose developing, tense relationship with Adra is a key dynamic in the film; Ballal and Szor.[2] The moment of truth in this relationship arrives when Abraham is asked on his arrival his opinion on “what your country is doing to us” to which he replies “I think it is a crime.
Malik describes the documentary “as a film about power;” the power of the Israeli state to dominate and trample over Palestinian lives and the converse lack of Palestinian power their resistance efforts. For in 2022, the IDF forced children and teachers out of the school that had been visited by Tony Blair in 2009, moments before bulldozers levelled it. At the time of Blair’s visit, the school had achieved fame for having been rebuilt in defiance of Israeli attempts to tear down the village. After his departure, Israel cancelled the extant order for the school’s demolition.[3] Sadly on this occasion there was to be no such intercession by a similar person of influence.
Though the film does not tell this part of the story, Malik points out that documents uncovered in Israeli state archives reveal that the IDF “firing zone” was purposely created for the pretext for ethnically cleansing the area to create a “buffer zone between Jews and Palestinian Arabs." The film shows slowly but with haunting deliberation how in order to accept defeat, soldiers confiscate vehicles, pour concrete into wells, cut water pipes, and assist armed settlers in attacking residents. The most harrowing scene concerns the shooting at point-blank range of one young Palestinian, Harun Abu Aram, after he protests about the confiscation of a generator by soldiers. Paralysed from the neck down and denied proper medical treatment and forced to live in a cave like many residents whose homes have been bulldozed, Abu dies before the completion of the filming, The soldier who fired the fatal shots knew he was being filmed but faced no sanction regardless. The most moral army in the world? As Malik states “With power comes impunity.” Or power unconstrained by legal norms which seemingly do apply in the occupied Palestinian territories. The “accursed victory” indeed in the words of one Israeli author who having had to administer the occupation as an IDF officer became a refusenik.
No Other Land made its debut at the 2023 Berlinale where it won the best documentary, and it has gone onto to win over sixty awards. However, it still does not have a distributor in the United States. The Associated Press review critic Mark Kennedy describes the film as “a piece of resistance but also of humanisation.” He describes the soundtrack to the film one:
The backstory to the documentary is the designation of part of the Masafer Yatta by the Israeli authorities in the 1980s as “Firing Zone 918”, a closed military area. In 1999, the Israeli government issued eviction orders in the area for “illegally living in a firing zone”. Two decades of court battles ensued which ended in 2022 when Israel’s Supreme Court ruled the villagers could be expelled. The documentary is a collaboration between Basel Adra and three other Palestinian co-directors; Israeli journalist and activist Yuval Abraham whose developing, tense relationship with Adra is a key dynamic in the film; Ballal and Szor.[2] The moment of truth in this relationship arrives when Abraham is asked on his arrival his opinion on “what your country is doing to us” to which he replies “I think it is a crime.
Malik describes the documentary “as a film about power;” the power of the Israeli state to dominate and trample over Palestinian lives and the converse lack of Palestinian power their resistance efforts. For in 2022, the IDF forced children and teachers out of the school that had been visited by Tony Blair in 2009, moments before bulldozers levelled it. At the time of Blair’s visit, the school had achieved fame for having been rebuilt in defiance of Israeli attempts to tear down the village. After his departure, Israel cancelled the extant order for the school’s demolition.[3] Sadly on this occasion there was to be no such intercession by a similar person of influence.
Though the film does not tell this part of the story, Malik points out that documents uncovered in Israeli state archives reveal that the IDF “firing zone” was purposely created for the pretext for ethnically cleansing the area to create a “buffer zone between Jews and Palestinian Arabs." The film shows slowly but with haunting deliberation how in order to accept defeat, soldiers confiscate vehicles, pour concrete into wells, cut water pipes, and assist armed settlers in attacking residents. The most harrowing scene concerns the shooting at point-blank range of one young Palestinian, Harun Abu Aram, after he protests about the confiscation of a generator by soldiers. Paralysed from the neck down and denied proper medical treatment and forced to live in a cave like many residents whose homes have been bulldozed, Abu dies before the completion of the filming, The soldier who fired the fatal shots knew he was being filmed but faced no sanction regardless. The most moral army in the world? As Malik states “With power comes impunity.” Or power unconstrained by legal norms which seemingly do apply in the occupied Palestinian territories. The “accursed victory” indeed in the words of one Israeli author who having had to administer the occupation as an IDF officer became a refusenik.
No Other Land made its debut at the 2023 Berlinale where it won the best documentary, and it has gone onto to win over sixty awards. However, it still does not have a distributor in the United States. The Associated Press review critic Mark Kennedy describes the film as “a piece of resistance but also of humanisation.” He describes the soundtrack to the film one:
where the bulldozer arrives and never stop, protected by soldiers ripping into simple concrete homes. The residents retreat to the caves, albeit with High-Definition TV connections and try to rebuild under the stealth of night. Then the bulldozers return” meaning that “every week a new family must decide whether to endure or leave their land.[4]
The hostile reaction of Israeli ministers and pro-Israel advocates to the film on the grounds of “antisemitism” requires a vigorous restatement of what can become a slippery and elusive concept. The Israeli culture and sports minister Miki Zohar, in calling for a boycott of the film, described its Oscar award “a sad moment for the world of cinema.” Acknowledging that “freedom of expression is an important value”, it seems to decrease in value in Zohar’s terms, when “in turning the defamation of Israel into a tool of international promotion” it commits “an act of sabotage against the State of Israel”. Meanwhile more than 100 Israeli filmmakers reacted against the minister’s call not to screen the film in a joint letter which condemned the attempts at silencing on his part and encouraging the public to watch the film and to arrive at their own independent judgement of it.[5] Others have dismissed it as a “carefully crafted piece of demagoguery” and congratulated “Hamas for its Oscar win.”[6]
In the US, the Mayor of Miami Beach, Florida, Steven Meiner who is Jewish has threatened to close the O cinema arthouse movie theatre for showing No Other Land on the grounds that it is “antisemitic.” Meiner is proposing a resolution at a City Commission meeting this Wednesday 19th March to revoke the O Cinema’s licence and to eliminate more than $40,000 in funding. Mayor Meiner who says he has watched the film described it as “a false one-sided propaganda attack on the Jewish people” and did not align with the values of the residents of Miami Beach city which does have a high concentration of Jewish residents and is a frequent destination for Israeli tourists.[7] However, the spectre of a religio-cultural community leader policing the thoughts and behaviour of its members and prescribing what they can or cannot see in arthouses arises.
The above two anecdotes are egregious but sadly increasingly typical examples of the weaponisation of antisemitism in the pursuit of the delegitimation of Palestinian rights and genuine, durable peace between Israelis and Palestinians. In the words of Kenneth Stern, one of the drafters of the IHRA definition of a antisemitism (itself a source of contestation), to label works like No Other Land “antisemitic “ is the wielding of a “blunt instrument “ by those who “seek out binary/good, black and white thinking.[8] The essence of antisemitism is its conspiratorial nature; it is the projection onto Jews of a fantastical capacity to run the world through shapeless and invisible cabals which mysteriously pull the strings of governments and the commanding heights of global finance and media. It can be summed up in one word: “globalism.” The other, perhaps more deadly, defining feature of antisemitism is the attribution to Jews of evils such as child killing and responsibility for catastrophic events such as the Black Death and even Covid-19 and of crimes committed by both communism and global capitalism (including the African slave trade); none of which have any evidential bases. What is common to all forms of antisemitism, be it of pre-Vatican Catholicism; Nazi racism, Soviet inspired antizionism, Islamism or Pan-Arabism is an irrational and delusive belief in the power of the “Jew” and the perceived rejection by the Jews of redemptive and emancipatory projects like socialism, Christianity, nationalism, liberalism – whatever they can be accused of.
None of those classic features of antisemitism figure in artistic projects concerned with the Occupation like No Other Land. First of all, it documents real transgressions by the IDF, and settlers not imagined, conspiratorial offences like Mossad involvement in 9/11 or the creation of ISIS. Second, the documentary makers do not attribute the actions of Israel in the West Bank to innate characteristics of Jews as a collectivity or of Judaism or even of Zionism (a term which should be retired as the Zionist dream was realised with the creation of the State of Israel in 1948; just as Irish nationalism or republicanism should at least be redefined to take account of an actually existing Irish nation state and the constitutional architecture of the GFA). Third, since the State of Israel does not represent the totality of World Jewry, it is the actions of Israelis as Israelis that need to be judged not the actions of Israelis as Jews. So, to apply the “antisemitic” slur to No Other Land is to silence the voices of Palestinian advocacy and to dismiss Israel’s treatment of Palestinian people.[9]
From pro-Palestinian critics of the film, an inverse censorship dynamic is at play. The Palestinian Campaign for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PCABI), aligned with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign has called out the film for allegedly violating BDS “anti-normalisation” guidelines. It accuses the makers of making the idea of Israeli “occupation, apartheid, and settler colonialism “seem normal and establishing normal relations with the Israeli regime." In a statement issued on 5th March 2025, PACBI concede that No Other Land does expose “an important, if partial dimension of Israel’s system of colonial oppression”. But the film makers are still in violation of BDS guidelines since it was produced with the aid of Israeli documentary filmmakers NGO Close Up which did not provide any financing but assisted the filmmakers during the film’s development. The offence committed in PACBI’s eyes was that of engaging with Israel as “if it were a normal state.” PACBI further noted the ‘simmering controversy’ across the Arab world caused by co-director Abraham’s acceptance speech in which he called out “the atrocious destruction” being rained on the people of Gaza as well as condemning the brutality of the Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October 2023. This was a “false equivalence between the colonised and the coloniser that may be used to rationalise Israel’s genocide.”[10]
So, there you have it. The two sides of the coin minted “cancel culture.” Extremists browbeating their communities as a whole to conform to their received narratives using in the most toxic manner possible emotionally resonant terms like “antisemitism,” “sabotage” and normalising “settler-colonialism” and even “genocide.” The desire to keep the conflict simmering in perpetuity. The imperative to freeze all debate within black and white, good, and bad binary thinking to satisfy the impulse of the algorithm moulded and echo chamber keyboard warriors. What really scares such doctrinal robots is the impulses of humanity and solidarity. The best riposte to the calls for a boycott was given by one local activist to the writer Samah Salaine on a visit to Masafer Yatta to determine support for such. All were proud of Abraham:
far more Palestinian than the online commentators attacking him. He is Jewish and Israeli but understands exactly what’s happening here just as I do, and he chose to stand with us.[11]
Do catch up with No Other Land on Channel 4 Player.
References
[1] Kenan Malik Ignore the row; this Oscar-winning film offers a vision of a shared Palestine in solidarity. The Observer Comment & Analysis 9th March 2025 p.47
[2] Ibid
[3] Ibid
[4] Movie Review: ‘No Other Land’ is a shocking look at Palestinian life under occupation.
[1] Kenan Malik Ignore the row; this Oscar-winning film offers a vision of a shared Palestine in solidarity. The Observer Comment & Analysis 9th March 2025 p.47
[2] Ibid
[3] Ibid
[4] Movie Review: ‘No Other Land’ is a shocking look at Palestinian life under occupation.
[6] Malik, The Observer 9th March 2025 p.47
[7] Miami Beach mayor moves to evict theater operator for showing Oscar-winning ‘No Other Land’
[8] Malik, op cit
[9] Ibid
[10] Palestinian Group Calls Out Oscar-Winning Doc ‘No Other Land' for "Normalization" of Israeli Occupation
[11] Malik, op cit.
⏩Barry Gilheany is a freelance writer, qualified counsellor and aspirant artist resident in Colchester where he took his PhD at the University of Essex. He is also a lifelong Leeds United supporter.
No other land with English subtitles...No Other Land' Interview with Israeli & Palestinian Co-Directors
ReplyDeleteGreat review Barry.
ReplyDeleteMy one quibble would be why the concern at the term genocide being used. It seems a forensically and intellectually accurate description rather than an emotive one.
Great writing.