Oakland, Ca. (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – The efforts to discredit and suppress the film No Other Land are part and parcel of a broader effort by Republicans to dominate and manipulate the mainstream media. They have gone to great lengths to undermine traditional media, in favor of the partisan charged social media outlets, free of boundaries and regulation. Though they dismiss mainstream media as “fake news,” they are forceful in manipulating its content through intimidation, meritless lawsuits and disinformation campaigns.
In his Oscar acceptance speech filmmaker and subject Basal Adra offended Zionist and Republican sensibilities when he called for an end to “the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people,” and said, “We call on the world to take serious actions to stop the injustice.” His appearance at the awards ceremony with Israeli partner Yuval Abraham, has elicited a firestorm of mendacity and hate from supporters of the current far, far-right Israeli government and their American counterparts, MAGA supporters. It concerns the fate under Israeli military occupation of 19 historic villages of Masafer Yatta near al-Khalil, the major Palestinian city that Israelis call “Hebron.”
Peter Lagerquist informs us,
- “The standard historical narrative of Masafir Yatta is that the ancestors of its present-day inhabitants first settled the area in the early decades of the nineteenth century [under the Ottoman Empire], and that they were farmers from the village of Yatta, today a large town dominating the southern reaches of the Hebron mountains. Their descendants will show you Ottoman-era tax receipts and sometimes ownership documents, proving their title to some stretch of land. It is thought that the migration occurred because of pressure on existing land reserves around Yatta . . .”
No Other Land, the story of the repeated destruction of homes and attacks on civilians of the Israeli occupation army and of illegal Israeli squatters on Palestinian land has still failed to secure a major US distributor, despite its Oscar win for Best Feature Documentary, among other high awards. It faces an extremely hostile atmosphere in a far right-wing United States. We have moved from a “post-truth” era to an “anti-truth” epoch. Convicted felon Donald Trump’s return to the White House has wrought a lightning strike of Orwellian nightmares in the US, including dramatic instances of “Thought Police” invocation. Trump’s “Thought Police” mentality has filtered into local government, as Republican enforcers have taken it upon themselves to unlawfully evict people from local government Council and Commission meetings. This happened in Coeur D’Alene, ID at a Republican Town Hall in February. The unlawful detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a prominent Palestinian student leader at Columbia University, is yet another instance. He was arrested on March 9 and sent to a federal detention facility in Louisiana, though he has not been charged with any crime.
“No Other Land” | Trailer | Berlinale 2024
Now a theatre in Miami is having its lease revoked over its refusal to adhere to Mayor Steven Meiner’s directive not to show the film. Out of devotion to his own orthodoxy, Meiner is abusing his standing to introduce legislation to terminate the lease of the O Cinema theatre at the old City Hall, and all of its public financing. This is direct retaliation for the screening of No Other Land, and a gross instance of government censorship in service to the new American far right agenda. The Founding Fathers, who didn’t want the government abridging the freedom of speech, are turning in their graves.
Attacks on the film’s integrity have come from a variety of far right sources. Greater Israel ideologues dream of annexing the entirety of the Palestinian West Bank, and misrepresent the legal situation there in favor of illegal Israeli squatters. The fact is that the 1993 Oslo Accords awarded all of the Israeli-Occupied territories to the Palestine Authority. The Israeli government, which signed them, pledged to withdraw all Israeli squatters from the Palestinian West Bank by the end of 1997. Benjamin Netanyahu boasts of having reneged on these treaty obligations, but that perfidy does not remove the obligations. The International Court of Justice ruled in summer 2024 that the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza is illegal. The Palestinian inhabitants of Masafer Yatta have every right to live in their villages and to build buildings, and the Israeli state has no legal justification for intervening against them. As No Other Land itself noted, the Israeli government pretext of making Masafer Yatta a military artillery testing zone was deliberately made up to prevent Palestinian villages in the area from growing. Expelling occupied populations from their homes is a grave violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949.
And if it is so important that Palestinians be expelled from their homes in Masafer Yatta for the sake of Israeli army firing ranges, why is it all right for armed squatters to come over the Green Line from Israel to settle there and to attack the local Palestinians?
A widely circulated and tendentious critique was published by two Israelis who are clearly in the camp of the Israeli squatter-settlers. Filmmaker Golan Ramraz and entrepreneur Guy Goldstein argued in the film trade website The Wrap that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (The Academy) promoted ‘a flagrant distortion of the truth,’ and compromised its ‘journalistic integrity’ in favor of political pandering.” They claim that the film violates the “non-fiction” requirement for the Academy’s consideration of a documentary film, and that the Oscar should be rescinded. How can raw footage of the IDF destroying homes, a school, an electrical tower, chicken coup and water well be considered fiction? Viewers of the film saw it recorded in real time, and this not something that can be staged.
They claim the film employs “historical fiction methodology,” and calls it “a masterclass in selective storytelling, omission and outright falsehoods – a piece of propaganda draped in the trappings of journalism.” Their source for determining this? The pro-settlement organization Ragavim Movement, which positions itself as a NGO (Non-Governmental Organization), in a lame stab at legitimacy for a Likud-sponsored hate group.
As with Mahmoud Khalil’s arrest, suppression of the film is another instance of “thought police” enforcement with Trump’s return to the White House. Far right wing Zionist and Republicans are making every effort to frame the film as anti-Semitic and fictionalized; with the common, willful failure and refusal to distinguish Judaism the religion, from the political ideology of Zionism. Calling out Israeli atrocities is not an act of anti-Semitism, but an obligation in Judaism to not dignify lies! This film painfully documents the facts of life on the ground for residents of Masafer Yatta, a collective of villages in the South Hebron Hills, inhabited by Palestinian families since the mid-19th Century. As for the allegation that this film compromises “journalistic integrity,” this is a documentary film, not pretending to be a journal with “opposing view” obligations.
Yet, Ramraz and Goldstein look to the Ravagim historical whitewash, in attempt to argue that Masafer Yatta was never inhabited by Palestinians UNTIL it was declared a military zone as a result of the 1993 Oslo Accords. Alternative facts, indeed! Their own journalistic weaknesses exude themselves with phrases such as how the film depicts Masafer Yatta residents “purportedly” expelled by Israeli authorities. Purportedly? The film carefully documents the escalating instances of destruction. And when the settlers withstand all the indignities the Israeli Army can dish out, the lawless settlers move in with more unregulated brutality, which ultimately prompts some residents to finally leave.
“Masafer Yatta,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3 / Clip2Comic, 2025
The film’s far-right critics pursue the settlers’ argument that their actions are merely to discourage illegal construction of dwellings, but make no mention that Palestinian building permit requests are uniformly denied as a pretext for the destruction of their villages. The official Ravagim position argued by Ramraz and Goldstein is that, “Masafer Yatta is state land, which was declared a military training ground in the early 1980s. They make the absurd assertion that, like all state lands set aside for military use, there was not, nor had there been in over 100 years, settlement of any kind on the land in question – no private property, no historic villages, nothing.” Yet public documents, historical records, period maps and other documents attest that this is an elaborate falsehood!
Ramraz and Goldstein characterize the film as a curated “story of victimhood, omitting any mention of illegal construction . . ,” though the film clearly depicts the frustration of resident applying for building permits, only to have everything denied. While it’s true that, “The film includes no interviews with Israeli officials,” the filmmakers had no such obligation. Why interview subjects poised to tell lies? No Other Land makes no pretensions of being the “on the one hand” sort of journalism.” Rather, it is a work of advocacy, a testimony to the heartbreaking, home-wrecking actions of the policies of Israel’s ruling Likud Party, directing the Israeli occupation army to drive people off of their family homesteads, destroy their water sources and all life-supporting infrastructure. As there are not always two equal and logical sides to every argument, a journalist has no obligation to dignify a fictionalized denial of truth and proven facts.
So why is there still no major US distribution deal for the film, despite the acclaim? Middle East expert Ken Dorph points out, “Along with the presence of some Zionists in the film distribution chain, the film industry likes to depict Americans as the good guys, and this is not a good guy narrative. There are many films about the Holocaust, where the Americans are heroes, but we are NOT the heroes in the Middle East. It’s hard for them to see the US as bad guys.”
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