Film Review: NO OTHER LAND

Critical analysis aside, the fact that Palestinian documentary NO OTHER LAND won an Oscar for Best Documentary in the bastion of Zionism that is Hollywood is huge. Or maybe I should say that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts used to be a bastion of Zionism? Maybe this win can be seen as a generational shift analogous to that of younger Jews moving away from unconditional support for the U.S.-Israel land theft enabled by genocide.

I saw the film yesterday at the Strand Theatre in Rockland, Maine (it will show again tonight, March 5, at 7pm). It called to mind another documentary about the challenges of documenting land theft actions by Israel's military and settler militias, FIVE BROKEN CAMERAS. Masafer Yatta and Bil'in are different locations, but both are in the occupied West Bank and constantly besieged by violent Zionists. CAMERAS was released in 2011; more than a decade later, not much has changed.

Student of law Basel Adra operates his family's gas station following his father's arrest and imprisonment in notorious torture site Ofer Prison. He puts aside his camera and explains to his partner in documentary journalism, Israeli Yuval Abraham, that he needs to provide for his family. While Abraham moves at will on special roads for cars with yellow i.e. Israeli license plates, Adra and his neighbors are constrained at every turn: checkpoints, home and school demolitions, stun grenades and live ammunition. 

The Maine audience gasped as Israeli soldiers poured concrete into a well, and when soldiers shot young Harun abu Amar as he struggled to prevent them stealing a generator. Amar's subsequent paralysis and suffering, in a filthy cave rather than in a now-demolished home, and his mother's anguish over caring for him and her wish that he could die, are fierce. (A footnote at the end of the film says he did die, and I imagine I wasn't the only one who muttered Thank God.)

The fact that Amar is visited by a host of foreign journalists and filmed even as he tells them he doesn't consent and that they should go away teases out the film's central theme: what good does documenting atrocities do if atrocities continue accelerating? The problem of finding an audience is discussed in terms of likes on social media or online publications. Adra asks Abraham if there is much interest in his articles among Israelis. There isn't.

A visit by the odious warmonger Tony Blair does little to remedy this, though appears to result in some temporary and limited relief from land theft.

A question I had going in: does this film subtly promote the Zionist project in Palestine? A friend had shared a post on the blog Marginalia Subversiva, "The Celebration of a Sanitized Narrative: How Genocide is Managed, Marketed, and Sanitized" An excerpt:

The Oscar win for No Other Land has been hailed as a historic moment for Palestinian representation in cinema. But beneath the surface of this celebration lies a deeply frustrating reality: Palestinian stories are only recognized when they fit a settler-approved narrative -- one that erases Gaza, centers Israeli voices, and reinforces the colonial fantasy of a "two-state solution."

The post linked to a scathing review by Mary Turfah, "'No Other Land' For Whom?" on the film website mubi.com. "The Palestinian-Israeli documentary indulges in a familiar kind of wishful thinking" is its subtitle and Turfah goes on to say:

Abraham remains committed to ending the program of ethnic cleansing committed in his name, but in the film and elsewhere, he attributes those horrors to the “occupation” rather than to Zionism. His condemnation of the former serves to preserve the latter. This distinction is artificial: from the standpoint of its victims, Israel is its occupation, the Zionist project necessarily one of ethnic cleansing and genocide, of total erasure.

Abraham attempts a rehabilitation of an iteration of Zionism that doesn’t exist but could, a familiar settler hope (think, imagine what America could be). 

Young children crying in fear as a contingent of Israeli soldiers in combat gear looms outside the windows of their village school made me cry, too. The villagers struggle to defend the school they've built, but the occupation's bulldozer crushes it anyway. Adults comfort the children sometimes with white lies like Don't worry, you are safe and It will be ok. What else is a parent to tell them?

There is no happy ending where the children are safe. In his Oscar acceptance speech Adra invoked his infant daughter, but at the end of LAND he answered Abraham's question about his desire for marriage and children by saying that without stability "it's complicated." Filming in Masafer Yatta occurred prior to Hamas' Gaza Al-Aqsa Flood operation October 7, 2023 but the final cut includes an audio clip of an English language broadcaster repeating PM Netanyahu's lie about Hamas killing thousands of Israelis that day. That lie goes unchallenged in the film.

On our way home I asked my husband to imagine being a 12 year old who didn't know about the Zionist occupation of Palestine. How would the film seem to someone without much background information? Mark said: I don't think anyone could see this evidence of Israel's sadistic cruelty without siding with the Palestinians. My conclusion: the film is imperfect, but the Oscar win is a good thing in terms of showing how land theft by Israel is ongoing and actually has nothing to do with Hamas. And, as Turfah observes, demonstrating the need for armed resistance. No wonder it has not found a U.S. distributor!

Of course my husband had plenty of background information heading into the film. As we rose from our seats he turned to me and said, Fuck Joe Biden. I would add Fuck 47, too. They both have the blood of tens of thousands of Palestinians on their hands.

If you live in the U.S. and want to send yet another message to your AIPAC-sponsored members of Congress, you can click here.

REVISED March 7: Revised to include this link to the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel’s March 5 statement on NO OTHER LAND.

REVISED March 8: Revised to include this link to Indie Nile’s video review of the film highlighting the normalization aspect of NO OTHER LAND.

Movie Review: ISRAELISM

A long-awaited documentary on the generational shift in perceptions of Israel by U.S. Jews came to the Maine International Film Festival last night. Seven years in the making, ISRAELISM combines searingly honest interviews with archival material to tell the story of the profound absence of the Palestinian point of view in the training of young Zionists. (Full disclosure: I donated to an early fundraising round for the film, and director Eric Axelman is a childhood friend of one of my kids.)

As he conducts a tour through the occupied West Bank, Baha Hilo of To Be There tells the camera crew, "Jewish Americans would tell me things like, We like you but we don't like Palestinians. Even though I'm the only Palestinian they know."

Animations for recalled incidents reminded me of the Israeli film WALTZ WITH BASHIR depicting tormented recollections of the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp massacres by a traumatized IDF soldier who participated. Forty years on, this week's IDF and settler attacks on the Jenin refugee camp will produce the same result: trauma for the Palestinian survivors and for their oppressors. The turning point for young idealists in the IDF who find themselves on the wrong end of a gun is a major theme in both films. And although no one in ISRAELISM uses the term "moral injury" it's clear that it affects even non-soldiers who witness the brutality of occupation firsthand -- in one case, by exiting a Birthright tour funded by older Jews who have made it their life's work to train kids to be Zionist.

Jewish identity in my lifetime has often focused on issues of justice and equality. When these traditional ethics of Judaism confront apartheid, land and water theft, and violent suppression, it creates friction. Holocaust trauma does not, for many young Jews, justify brutality against the indigenous people of Palestine.

Anchored by the recollections of two young Jews, the film centers Simone Zimmerman and Eitan. We hear Eitan recount why he enlisted in the IDF and how his experiences tormenting Palestinians while "just following orders" turned him against the occupation. We see Zimmerman give details of the indoctrination she experienced in her Jewish day school and summer camps, producing a 10% IDF enlistment rate among her U.S. high school graduating class. 

We also see Zimmerman, co-founder of the organization If Not Now, touring the West Bank with Sami Awad of Holy Land Trust. And headlines about how she was hired as Jewish outreach advisor to Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign and fired only days later for a past social media post critical of Israeli PM Netanyahu.

It's not the only brush with U.S. presidential politics in the film. Coincidentally, current Green Party candidate Dr. Cornel West appears giving a talk on his views on the spiritual dimensions of Israeli apartheid. (Not incidentally, the pro-Israel views of Democratic primary challengers Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Marianne Williamson have eroded support for both among leftist opinion leaders in the U.S.)

The film succeeds in part because it maintains a sharp focus. It could have widened to include many related topics: why so many politicians and other power brokers in the U.S. are beholden to AIPAC and Israel (cf. Epstein's black book). The complicity of the corporate media in pushing pro-Israel narratives. The intifadas and ongoing Palestinian resistance could have been covered in more detail. And the film could have addressed the constitutional crisis of the alleged "only democracy in the Middle East" enforcing segregation and ethnic cleansing.

It could have delved into the role of settlers, many of whom are from the U.S., as the opportunistic Zionists who serve as colonizers. One of the most poignant clips in the film is one I'd seen elsewhere: a Palestinian woman confronts a settler saying, "You are stealing my house!" He responds in a U.S. native speaker accent, "And if I don't steal it, someone else is gonna steal it." So much for his Jewish ethics.

To my mind Zimmerman gets the last word:

What we've been told is the only way that Jews can be safe is if Palestinians are not safe. 

The more I learned about that, the more I came to see that as a lie.