Basel Adra enters the scheduled video call late to talk about No Other Land, the overwhelming documentary he shot with Yuval Abraham about how the Israeli army has mercilessly destroyed his village in Masafer Yatta (West Bank) arguing that it is an area they need for military training. “It’s been a hard day, now he’ll tell you,” says the person who organizes the online interviews on the occasion of the premiere of the documentary on Filmin.
A few minutes later Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham appear on the screen, each one connected from their screen. Adra explains that the Israeli army has just demolished the house of another of the documentary’s co-directors (Hamdan Ballal). Despite this, he agrees to continue with the interview. Both Basel and Yuval offer in No Other Land a portrait in mud of the army’s tasks to tear down each Palestinian town. His camera captures the demolitions, the violence, the desperation, the shootings and the clandestine arrests. As he defined it after winning the European Film Award for Best Documentary, “an ethnic cleansing” that continues to go unpunished.
They met five years ago, and the peculiarity of their relationship is that Basel Adra is Palestinian while Masafer Yatta is Israeli. Their commitment to the situation of the Palestinian people made them coincide by documenting everything, and the result is the most important and painful documentary of the year. One that they confess that they did not know when they should finish it because everything remains the same. “Today the settlers have invaded Hamdan’s house, so all this is still going on. We had to finish a movie that has no ending. “When things became so violent, in a way they had never been before, we decided that if we didn’t act and publish the film, most of the villages would already be destroyed by the army and the settlers by the time we did,” says Adra. .
Although No Other Land Also show the friendship between both, a Palestinian and an Israeli, Basel Adra asks that people not be confused, because what they want to show is “reality.” “It’s not the goal to show people that we can be friends. We wanted to show what life is like for a Palestinian and an Israeli living in this land. Show it especially to those who deny that these types of things happen that they can see with their own eyes in Not Other Land. Any Israeli can travel, come and go and drive wherever they want, but I can’t do it because of the policies and laws that are imposed on us here as Palestinians,” says Basel Adra.
For Yuval Abraham, it was essential to learn Arabic, it was what allowed him to “speak directly with Palestinian people and there is a lot of difference in learning about Palestine through them instead of through intermediaries.” “In Israel’s traditional media, the Palestinians are only shown as a security threat. When you speak Arabic, and you don’t just use it to spy on them or interrogate them, which is what most Israelis who speak it use it for, there is a big change because you talk to the people who don’t show you the news and you realize how similar that we all are. “The language for me was a political change that made me much more critical of what was happening,” he explains.
In the documentary he is seen trying to break the prejudices of Israelis in the media, explaining what is happening even if nothing changes. Witnessing the impunity of his country. An impunity that he considers to be caused by two reasons: “The geopolitical interests of the United States in the region and the way in which they see Israel as a key actor in the exercise of their influence in their fight against Russia and China. In addition, there are the different lobbies, which are exerting a lot of pressure in the US. Politicians know that if they take a different kind of stance, they will pay a price politically. To that we must add racism. “I think it cannot be denied that for many people Palestinian lives are not worth as much as Israeli lives.”
The illegal occupation should end if the countries that support Israel with weapons and money take measures to implement the ICJ ruling and achieve a ceasefire and an end to the genocide.
Yuval Abraham
— Journalist and filmmaker
He believes that racism is evident when analyzing the difference between “the displays of solidarity that the world rightly expressed towards Israel after the attacks of October 7, and those that have subsequently been shown towards Palestine, where the number of children and civilian deaths since October 7 is much higher.” “It’s horrible and it’s a crime, but you see racism in how many people find it easier to empathize with people they consider part of the Western community than with people they consider less human in some way, since it’s easier for them to accept their deaths. “, he ditches and points to another problem, “the lack of opposition to Netanyahu in terms of policies towards Palestine.” For this reason, he believes that “there is no hope for change”, rather “a political consensus that the occupation will continue.”
No Other Land He has spent many years in the Israeli occupation of this village. Among all the moments, Tony Blair’s visit when he was British Prime Minister stands out. The filmmakers show that when the international community acts there can be change. That is why the filmmakers believe that “the illegal occupation, as ruled by the International Court of Justice, should end if the countries that support Israel with weapons and money took measures to implement this ruling and achieve a ceasefire and an end to the genocide. But unfortunately they don’t.”
For them, social networks have become a fundamental tool to “help the Palestinian narrative,” becoming something similar to “a means of communication for Palestinians with the rest of the world.” “Things have always been told in a biased way, especially by the main Western media. Social media has meant that many of the evidence and crimes that are committed are filmed and shared. I don’t know how much it has helped, but at least for world opinion it has, even if no measures are taken to stop the crimes that are really being committed against the Palestinians,” adds Basel Adra.
The documentary has just made the first cut to reach the Oscars, triumphed as best documentary at the Berlinale and has won numerous US critics’ awards. However, the awards bring little joy when they have to “deal with reality, with seeing how the settlers are expanding” on their lands as their film shows. He hopes that his film calls people “to unity and fight,” but they do not hide their sadness in moments that they consider “very hard” and in the face of those who try to find “some hope to believe in change.”
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