By Arieh Ullmann

After watching the makers of “No Other Land” win an Oscar for Best Documentary, I did not want to miss the opportunity to see the film in Ithaca. The documentary chronicles the demolition of Masafer Yatta by Israeli authorities. In their acceptance speeches at the Academy Awards, Palestinian co-director Basel Adra criticized the “ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people,” while the Israeli co-director, Yuval Abraham, called for an end to Israel’s “unequal” treatment of Palestinians.

The film is about power, those who have power – the Israelis – and those who don’t – the Palestinians.
In 1980, the Israeli government designated Masafer Yatta an area for military training and ordered the Palestinian villagers to abandon their homes. The film mentions that government documents reveal that the military justification was a pretense; the true intent was to displace Palestinian villagers to make room for Israeli settlements. The film picks up in 2022 when, after a decades-long legal battle, the Israeli high court rules in favor of eviction and the destruction of the community starts. 
Another theme of the film is the friendship between Basel and Yuval, which highlights the vast gap in everyday life between the two who basically are neighbors. Basel, the Palestinian, has given up studying law because he believes he will never be able to practice law. The only option to earn a living is to work as a manual laborer in Israel. He points out to Israeli journalist Yuval, who hails from Beersheva, that he is prohibited from leaving the area, and even moving around the West Bank is difficult due to the many IDF checkposts, whereas Yuval can come and go as he pleases.
The camera captures action by action, in a straightforward, unsentimental manner that heightens the effect. Anyone who has been following what is going on in the West Bank may have read about these demolitions. However, seeing the destruction in action is altogether different than reading about it.
The film is unusual on multiple levels. For one, its creation – the capture of the actions of Israel’s army – has been threatened throughout filming, and the makers’ equipment was constantly at risk. The film’s imagery is heart rendering in its matter-of-fact directness, an impression reinforced by the fact that many scenes were captured by a hand-held frequently shaking camera. Many sequences are deeply disturbing: bulldozers flattening homes while the villagers frantically try to salvage their possessions; chickens navigating a destroyed coop; a toilet sticking out of a crumpled up bathroom; soldiers ripping a generator out of a villager’s hands; a women pleading with stone-faced officials to spare the home where her son, paralyzed by an Israeli bullet, is lying; settlers smashing windows of the villagers’ homes while an IDF soldier watches the scene; and a settler shooting a villager in the stomach. 
As expected, the film was criticized by Israel’s government. The Israeli Minister of Culture and Sports declared: “The Oscar win for the film ‘No Other Land’ is a sad moment for the world of cinema. Instead of presenting the complexity of Israeli reality, the filmmakers chose to amplify narratives that distort Israel’s image vis-à-vis international audiences.” Not unexpected given the current political climate in the U.S. is that Steven Meiner, the mayor of Miami Beach, threatened to close down a cinema that intended to show the film and that the film has difficulties finding a U.S. distributor. Less expected to me was that the response from the Palestinian side was not unanimously positive. “‘No Other Land’ serves a soft Zionist function – exposing certain injustices while still legitimizing Zionist presence as part of the narrative, rather than centering decolonization and Palestinian liberation on our own terms,” was the reaction of Within Our Lifetime, a New York City-based group. 
Also negative was the reaction from the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. PACBI did not criticize the film’s content; its criticism is rooted in its anti-normalization stance. Anti-normalization refers to the refusal of some Palestinians to work with Israelis other than those who call for an “end to the occupation, end to apartheid, and the right of return for Palestinian refugees.”
I left the movie theater in emotional turmoil. I was deeply disturbed by the arrogance and brutality of the Israeli soldiers, full of admiration for the peaceful and heroic resistance of the villagers, but mostly ashamed as a Jew. How is it possible that three generations after the Holocaust Jews can act in this way? It is painful to face the reality that the descendants of the Hebrew slaves in biblical Egypt would become the pharaohs of today. 
For those who want to take action and help Palestinian villagers keep their land, one place is the Center for Jewish Nonviolence (cjnv.org) that “brings Jewish activists from around the world to Israel/Palestine to join in Palestinian-led nonviolent civil resistance.” An alternative close by is to contact your New York state representative regarding Assembly Bill A6943A, which seeks to amend the not-for-profit corporation law and “establishes the “Not on our dime!: Ending New York funding of Israeli settler violence act” to prohibit not-for-profit corporations from engaging in unauthorized support of Israeli settlement activity.”