‘No Other Land’: The paradoxes of an Oscar win in a West Bank under siege
First published at Canadian Dimension.
It’s not even five in the morning, but the entire village is awake for suhur, the morning meal before beginning the Ramadan fast. In the midst of feasting on eggs, bread, and dates, word begins to travel through Masafer Yatta that No Other Land, a film about this very place, has won an Academy Award. For the rest of the day, every activist in Masafer Yatta is playing Basel Adra’s acceptance speech on their phone. The atmosphere felt surreal. Just the night before, settlers had stormed the village of Susya, home to co-director Hamdan Ballal, hurling rocks and breaking windows of homes and cars.
In the village of Um Al Kheir, where a demolition took place just a week before the Academy Awards, many of the villagers have personally seen countless demolitions in their community. But, most have not seen the film that portrays their lives. The day after the award ceremony, Palestinian and international activists in Um Al Kheir gathered in an office to watch the film. As they watched, it was clear the Palestinian activists were intimately familiar with every demolition depicted on the screen. They told us in which village it took place and the family who lost their home, and they knew the names of the soldiers and police. Against the backdrop of constant settler attacks and army incursions, it felt like a small miracle to watch the entire movie without interruption.
When the film ended, the room was quiet for a bit. Then, an international visitor asked one of the Palestinian activists what he thought about the movie? Eid Hathaleen, an activist and artist from Um Al Kheir, who has documented nearly every demolition in the region, and who experienced his own home demolition over the summer, spoke first. He said the film was very powerful. “I’ve seen many demolitions, but I’ve never seen them shown in a story this way.” With visuals, narration, and a musical score, the same demolitions he had witnessed in person had a different impact.
An activist in his 20s, born and raised in Firing Zone 918 in the southern West Bank, who does not wish to be identified, speaks passionately about the movie when asked. He first saw it when it was screened in the Masafer Yatta village of At-Tuwani, where Basel Adra is from. He describes the initiatives locals took to get their story out before the documentary. In addition to social media, there have been blogs, articles, and short films. Of course, audiences of thousands were reached through these methods, but they pale in comparison to the numbers of people who have heard of Masafer Yatta because of No Other Land.
“Millions of people are watching our story.” Like Basel, this man is not an activist by choice, but by necessity. Having spent more of his childhood in the company of soldiers than at the movies or goofing off with his friends, his path seemed preordained. These activists hope that the movie accomplishes what they have been trying to achieve for decades. They hope more people will learn about their situation and speak up against the injustice. They hope more international visitors will come here to engage in protective presence. And above all, they hope for an end to violence, harassment, and demolitions.
The dreams of the people of Masafer Yatta are modest. They simply want the same access to safety, water, electricity, and education that most of us in Canada take for granted. The suspension of these fundamental rights is not lost on me as I visit the area for my fourth time. Prior to his departure for the award ceremony, Hamdan was joking about where he might keep his Academy Award if he won. Surely it wouldn’t last a week in his home before settlers or soldiers took it.
In the wake of its Oscar win, No Other Land has been criticized for normalizing the Occupation and violating Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) guidelines. Normalization is when Palestinians and Israelis join forces in a way that fails to recognize the power imbalance between the two sides. By failing to explicitly acknowledge the privilege and oppression inherent in apartheid, these partnerships, the argument goes, serve to justify Israeli propaganda that characterizes the Occupation as a conflict that can be solved merely through mutual understanding.
On March 5, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), the academic and cultural branch of the BDS movement created by Palestinian civil society groups, published a statement noting the BDS standards that the movie fails to uphold. First, financial support for the film came from Close Up, an organization that is itself accused of engaging in normalization. Second, some of the Israeli members of the film crew “have failed to acknowledge that Israel is perpetrating a genocide, or have even made extremely harmful, immoral statements drawing a false equivalence between the colonizer and the colonized that may be used to rationalize Israel’s genocide.” PACBI acknowledges that the Israeli crew updated a previous statement to fulfill this anti-normalization requirement. The organization went on to say that Palestinian filmmakers like Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal do not and should not need Israeli counterparts or approval to tell their stories. They can stand on their own as credible narrators of their history and lives.
The first time I saw No Other Land, I was shocked at the intimate friendship between Basel and Yuval that it portrayed. After hearing so much about the film while visiting Masafer Yatta, I expected it to revolve solely around the various villages facing demolitions. Later when I again visited the area, I heard that the documentary had been pitched many times before it was picked up. For most of these pitches, the film was as I imagined it, a documentary exclusively about the situation in Masafer Yatta, without the story of Basel and Yuval’s friendship. However, no one willing to produce the film could be found until the storyline of an Israeli-Palestinian friendship was added. Someone jokes that whenever they try to talk about the demolitions in Masafer Yatta during interviews, reporters instead ask about the friendship between Basel and Yuval. To their frustration, as peoples’ homes hung in the balance, the burning question was how they could possibly manage to be friends.
When I arrived at Masafer Yatta one month ago, many of the people here were understandably pervaded by a sense of hopelessness. In the time since I’ve been here, there have been more demolitions in this small area than I ever expected to witness. These demolitions, depicted so rawly in the film, are dreadful to watch. With a line of officers separating villagers and activists from getting near the bulldozers, little can be done to stop an impending demolition.
Political and social pressure, both from within these borders and internationally, often seems the most successful route to ending evictions and settler incursions. In these villages, most people wake up every morning and wonder if their house will still be standing by nightfall. The erratic and violent behaviour from settlers and soldiers often makes it difficult to plan for the future — the next day or the next year. But there have been wins, such as the school in At-Tuwani featured in the movie, and others, such as permission to rebuild homes in the ethnically cleansed village of Zanuta.
On March 10, PACBI issued an additional comment and FAQ about their previous statement regarding No Other Land. In it, they reaffirm their position, and also emphasize that they have not called for a boycott of the film. A few days after the Oscar win, some international activists were asked to watch a group of children in the village of Um Al Kheir as their mothers watched the film for the first time. Despite the fact that the children regularly come face to face with machine-gun-wielding soldiers and settlers, the mothers didn’t want them to see the movie. Or perhaps they couldn’t bear to watch them watching the movie.
For a community that has fought so hard for the very right to exist, this film and the accompanying global discussion, opens up possibilities. In his acceptance speech, Basel speaks of his hopes of a different life for his daughter. This too is the dream of every parent I’ve met in Masafer Yatta. For them, an award or a position statement changes little in their day to day realities. But the movie is important because it tells their story to the world.
Anna Lippman is a third-generation Ashkenzi Jewish settler on Turtle Island (North America). She is a PhD student in Sociology at York University. Anna’s research looks at identity, and how young people’s thoughts about themselves are influenced by the world around them. Anna organizes with several groups in Toronto including Showing Up for Racial Justice and Independent Jewish Voices.