"No Other Land"

The reactions to, and effects of, the Oscar-winning documentary

As you’ve probably heard, the winner of the Oscar for Best Documentary is No Other Land, a film about the IDF destruction of a Palestinian village and oppression of its residents. It was created by Basel Adra, a Palestinian activist, together with Yuval Abraham, an Israeli activist.

I have not seen the film and this post is not about the contents of the film. Instead, it’s about the issues surrounding it.

Many Jews deny that there is any significant problem of unjustified IDF and settler violence against Palestinians. Unfortunately, they are mistaken. The reasons for their mistake are twofold. First is that their usual sources of news do not cover such things. Second is that they are deeply uncomfortable with the idea that there could be such a serious problem. This in turn is partly because everyone likes to think that their side are as virtuous as possible. But it’s also because of a fear that if you acknowledge the existence of unjustified violent behavior against Palestinians, then you’re giving power to the idea that Israelis are the “bad guys” in the overall conflict, along with harming the Israel side in general.

This fear is not unjustified. And this film is a great example of why.

I’ve seen some articles contesting the claims made in the film. I have not investigated them and I have no idea who is correct. But let’s suppose that all the claims made in the film are true - that there was unjustified oppression of Palestinians. That would indeed be a terrible thing. However, what most people will take from that is that in the big picture, the Palestinian cause is just and the Israeli cause is unjust. This would be a fallacy and a distortion.

From what I’ve read, the film does not explain how Israel came to be in possession of the West Bank in the first place. And there are many people who believe that this happened because Israel decided one day to do a land grab. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. Israel came to control the West Bank because Jordan attacked Israel from it in 1967 (after Israel had urged them to stay out of the war). This was part of a decades-long open war by the Arab states (including the Palestinian leadership) to annihilate Israel.

Now, you can debate the strategic wisdom of Israel retaining military control of the West Bank, and you can certainly debate the wisdom of settling civilians all over it, including in places that are not of strategic necessity. ( I strongly recommend Micah Goodman’s crucial book Catch-67.) But the context in which Israel came to control it is surely very relevant.

Equally important is the context in which Israel continues to control it. If you read the Palestinian and pro-Palestinian reviews and comments on the movie, you’ll see something very interesting. They are not at all as infatuated with it as are the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Virtually all of the Palestinian and pro-Palestinians criticize Yuval Abraham as being part of the problem rather than part of the solution. This is because Abraham is in favor of two states, Israel and Palestine, living side-by-side in peace. Whereas what the Palestinians and pro-Palestinians argue is that Israel, as a settler-colonial state, has no legitimacy at all. As one review says, Abraham “reinforces the colonial fantasy of a ‘two-state solution’.”

There are many people who speak positively about a “Two State Solution.” But it’s always crucially important to clarify what Palestinians mean when they talk about it. Often, they understand it to mean a fully militarized Palestine (after all, anything less would not be fair), ethnically cleansed of Jews, alongside an Israel to which millions of Palestinians have “returned.” The end result of this is the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state, followed by the destruction of its Jewish inhabitants.

Yuval Abraham may mean well, and the goal of trying to stop Israeli abuses of power is important. But he’s playing the role of useful idiot. As can be seen in the linked articles and comments above, the goal of far too many Palestinians is not to live in peace alongside Israel, but rather to obtain justice, which in their minds means undoing Israel. The film may assist in undermining Israeli abuses of power, but it is going to be far more influential in undermining Israel’s very existence and empowering those who seek Israel’s destruction.

Of course, the ultimate irony for a film called “No Other Land” is that while Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are not offered refuge by any of the numerous large Muslim Arab states which claim to care about them, those Palestinians who do live in those countries are living among people of the same ethnicity. This is especially true for Jordan, which was actually part of historic Palestine until the British split it off and gave it to the Hashemites from Arabia. Meanwhile, for most Israeli Jews, there is truly no other land.