My Word: When cameras call the shots

This is a movie I won’t be paying to see. No Other Land won an Oscar this week in the best documentary feature category. It all comes down to the plot. A plot of land in this particular part of the Middle East and “The Zionist plot” is guaranteed to draw a crowd.

In an additional plot twist, the four directors of the movie were two Palestinians and two Israelis. The Academy Awards crowd lapped it up.

In his acceptance speech, Palestinian director Basel Adra called “on the world to take serious actions to stop the injustice and to stop the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people.” 

Israeli Yuval Abraham at least acknowledged the plight of the Israeli hostages in Gaza and called for them to be freed, but first he decried the “atrocious destruction of Gaza and its people” – the fault of Israel and the US, rather than the Hamas regime, apparently.

The film title itself is classic Palestinian cultural appropriation – the words “I have no other country” are the title of an iconic song by Ehud Manor, whose lyrics start: “Ein li eretz acheret, gam im admati bo’eret,” “I have no other country, even if the ground is burning.” Originally considered an anti-war song in the 1980s, over the years – through many wars, waves of Palestinian terrorism, and social protests – it has come to be adopted by both Left and Right as a sort of anthem.

As my friend Heddy Abramowitz pointed out in a Facebook post, the movie title is “true for the Jews.” There is no other Jewish homeland. There are, however, some 22 Arab countries and some 50 Muslim-majority ones.

This movie is not about giving the full picture; it’s about making a scene and making sure it’s captured on camera.

Writing for HonestReporting, Rachel O’Donoghue provided the facts that the average Western audience is not aware of, and the smug Academy Awards audience probably didn’t care about. What the filmgoer sees is Adra courageously risking arrest “to document the destruction of his hometown” in Masafer Yatta, a collection of structures near the town of Yatta in the Southern Hebron Hills (the West Bank.)

As O’Donoghue notes, “The reality, as usual, is far less dramatic than the Oscar-winning version.

“Historically, Masafer Yatta was a grazing ground for Bedouin and locals from the nearby town of Yatta – land they used but never permanently settled. Those who stayed for extended periods lived in caves, not in established villages.”

In the early 1980s, the IDF designated the area as a military training ground but allowed locals to graze their flocks there, giving advance warning ahead of live-fire exercises. The arrangement worked until 1997, post-Oslo Accords, when the Palestinians petitioned the High Court to revoke the training zone designation.

According to HonestReporting: “At the same time, illegal construction ramped up. Permanent structures began appearing, first in small clusters and then expanding into what is now generously described as the ‘12 villages’ of Masafer Yatta.

“Under the Oslo Accords, Israel maintains full control over this area – known as Area C – until a final status agreement is reached. But that didn’t stop the creeping expansion, which military sources say wasn’t about housing a growing population but about creating political ‘facts on the ground.’ Many structures, they report, stand empty, existing solely to inflate the appearance of a permanent Palestinian presence.”

Following a long legal battle, the court ruled that illegal structures could be dismantle.

“Yet,” O’Donoghue points out, “despite breathless media reports of ‘displacement,’ the reality remains: evacuations have been minimal, the illegal buildings are still there, and the so-called ‘villages’ remain.”

We’re not talking about ethnic cleansing, here. Not by a long shot. In any other country, this would be a simple matter of tackling squatters. But this is “no other land”: Here, foreign states, international bodies, and NGOs are involved in funding the land grab – and the movie about it.

Call it “The Camera Wars.” It’s another tool in the Palestinian battle to rewrite history, getting rid of the Jews unless they can be cast as the bad guys: the soldiers, settlers, and Zionists. The concept is simple and effective: character assassination by camera. It sounds non-violent, but don’t be fooled.

Those who fund “Pallywood,” need to understand that these camera projects are not a matter of empowerment. Instead of fostering peaceful conflict resolution, they teach that provocation is power. The camera shots create propaganda that easily evolves into incitement.

I was reminded of Ahed Tamimi, whose bountiful curls and much-filmed habit of trying to provoke IDF soldiers in her village of Nabi Salah earned her the nickname in Israel of Shirley Temper. She has turned her fame into fortune, or at least a career as a feted Palestinian activist. 

Tamimi first drew international attention in a confrontation with Israeli forces at the age of 11; three years later she got her big break when she was caught on camera biting the hand of a soldier; at the age of 16, she was filmed slapping a soldier. When she was later arrested, it sparked international outrage over the detention of a minor, rather than a discussion on the Palestinian form of child abuse that exploits minors both to attack and serve as human shields.

Nadav Lapid’s movie Ahed’s Knee, was inspired by her. In 2022, at the tender age of 21, she released a memoir They Called Me a Lioness.

Her “peaceful resistance” has morphed more into the style of her relative, Jerusalem Sbarro pizza bombing terrorist Ahlam Tamimi, who appallingly is living the good life in Jordan.

This is what Ahed posted on X in November 2023, just one month after the Hamas invasion and mega-atrocity in Israel in which 1,200 were murdered and 251 abducted:

“Our message to the settlers – we are waiting for you in every city of the West Bank, from Hebron to Jenin. We will slit your throats, and you will say that what Hitler did to you was a joke. We’ll drink your blood and eat your skulls. Come on, we’ll wait for you.”

IT SHOULD be noted that the cinema culture that once flourished in Gaza ended when Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood affiliate, ousted Fatah following Israel’s pullout in 2005. If there is a lack – or absence – of cinemas in Palestinian-controlled areas “from Hebron to Jenin,” it is not because of “the occupation.”

Israeli actor and peace activist Juliano Mer Khamis, 52, who ran a drama project in Jenin, was shot dead by masked men in 2011 near the theater he founded, following many threats on his life from Islamists.

Jenin springs to mind whenever the discussion turns to Palestinian so-called documentaries. Make that Jenin, Jenin. Israeli Arab filmmaker Mohammed Bakri made the movie of that name purporting to tell the events in the city during Operation Defensive Shield. (The counter-terrorism operation in April 2002 was sparked by a wave of attacks and suicide bombings, including the Park Hotel massacre in which 30 people were murdered as they sat down to eat on Seder night.)

During the 11 days of fighting in Jenin, 52 Palestinians were killed, the majority of them combatants, and 23 IDF soldiers fell in battle, according to UN data. Bakri fabricated figures and stories of brutality and deliberately mistranslated interviews, turning the Israeli forces into modern-day Nazis and rendering the Palestinians as innocent victims.

Enraged by the vilification, soldiers who had participated in the operation sued Bakri for defamation. After many years of legal wrangling, the Supreme Court finally maintained a ruling barring the screening of the movie in Israel and awarding damages to an officer who had been named and accused of war crimes.

Israelis and Jews are no strangers to blood libels, and they come in different forms – including movies purporting to be objective documentaries.

And the winner is… no one. Nobody gains from inflaming tensions and encouraging Palestinian terrorism. Not only can the camera lie, it can shoot to kill.