No Other Land

No Other Land

This film deservedly won the Oscar for Best Documentary and hopefully should get a wider viewing and prompt greater Western criticism of Netanyahu’s treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank.

Made by a Palestinian-Israeli collective, the film shows the unexpected friendship that forms between a Palestinian activist, Basel, and an Israeli journalist, Yuval, while documenting the destruction of Palestinian villages in the Masafer Yatta region of the West Bank over four summers.

The film is both depressing and distressing and shows the Israeli army destroying the homes of Palestinian settlers in their own land, while highlighting the resilience of the Palestinian villagers who remain, endure (beyond all patience) and rebuild again and again and again. Only for their homes and settlements to be knocked down again. Yet, when an Israeli soldier tells a villager to live in another land, she replies ‘There is no other land, this is our land’. And that is the dichotomy because there is no life and no hope for the Palestinians. Only despair, because they are confined to the West Bank and Gaza Strip with tight restrictions on their freedom of movement. On their own land in a savage system of segregation and dehumanisation.

The end of the film reveals that Netanyahu’s government created a secret plan to turn Masafer Yatta into a military training ground to prevent the expansion of Arab villages in the West Bank. Palestinian land. Why? Because the right wing Israeli government supports Jewish incursion into Palestinian territory. Murder is common and the film shows illegal masked Jewish settlers attacking Palestinian villages in Musafer Yatta with impunity and casually shooting Palestinians who resist. It is shocking and distressing as you know the murderers will not be caught.

Israeli journalists like Yuval remain the hope of Israel. Netanyahu and his far Right Zionists are not the answer. I like to think that Yuval is more representative of Jewish public opinion than Netanyahu and his Likud supporters who are propping up the government.

With 45,000 men, women and children dead in the Gaza War, allegations of war crimes hang over Netanyahu like a sword of Damocles. He has lost his way. He has forgotten Jewish history. The good Lord would not want this for the Jews and the Palestinian people. This, I know.