No Other Land

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

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From Yuval Abraham, Hamdan Ballal, Basel Adra and Rachel Szor, comes the jarring and affecting documentary, “No Other Land.” This film is very difficult and upsetting, but surely earns its Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. It is painstakingly accurate heartfelt and visceral. It does not hold back.

The film focuses on the forced displacement of Palestinian families by the Israeli police in Masafer Yatta, a collection of 19 Palestinian hamlets in the southern West Bank in the Hebron Governate of Palestine.

Activist and journalist Basel Adra befriends Yuval Abraham, who encourages Basel in his quest for documentation of police aggression and the stress of surviving in his struggling village.

Again and again, with repeated concentration, Israeli police knock down homes and schools as residents look on devastated in shock and horror. As Basel Adra documents from his smart phone, the residents are not Hamas terrorists but average citizens simply trying to conduct their lives. To watch the decimation of these homes is abhorrent and horrifying.

The most disturbing moment in the film occurs when an Israeli settler shoots Basel Adra’s cousin at point blank range. As a result, he is in a wheelchair and later dies.

Basel Adra was born in Masafer Yatta, and his family has roots in the land since the 1800s.

The documentary clearly portrays the horror of this execrable and needless occupation. In this case, the Israeli settlers are acting reprehensibly with indiscriminate malignancy.

At one point, Yuval criticizes Basel for being passionate and driven. For Basel, he has no choice. Masafer Yatta is home.

This film has had great difficulty finding a distributor. It is severely hard to watch, yet it is necessary. We can all agree that both Israelis and Palestinians carry a shared responsibility for the violence and a guilt over their warring. However, the razing of Masafer Yatta and the civilian violence in Gaza is disgusting on a human level and furthermore, reveals no path or purpose with no beginning or end in sight. Hate begets hate.

Write Ian at ianfree11@yahoo.com