The Israeli military reportedly raided No Other Land co-director Basel Adra’s home in the Occupied West Bank on Saturday, September 13, as first made public on X by investigative journalist Yuval Abraham, the film’s other co-director.
The raid followed an apparent attack by Israeli settlers on Adra’s land in the At-Tuwani village in Masafer Yatta. Adra said in an Instagram post that a group of Israeli settlers attempted to run over his brother with an all-terrain vehicle before physically attacking him, his older brother, and his cousin.
At least one of the individuals attacked by the settlers, Adra’s brother, was hospitalized, according to his post. Settlers also beat a foreign activist, who was a woman, according to Adra. The perpetrators came from Havat Ma’on, an illegal 600-person settlement that has reportedly solicited donations from residents of the United States to fund its paramilitary groups.
The incident comes amid a spate of violent attacks perpetrated against affiliates of the Israeli-Palestinian collective that produced the internationally acclaimed film, which documents the Israeli occupation and forced displacement of the Masafer Yatta region. In July, Awdah Hathaleen, an activist who contributed to the filming of No Other Land, was shot and killed by a notorious Israeli settler. Earlier this year, during Ramadan, settlers taunting him as the “Oscar-winning filmmaker” reportedly beat co-director Hamdan Ballal at his home in the Occupied West Bank.
While Adra was at the hospital with his injured family members, he said, the Israeli military raided his home, where his wife and nine-month-old baby were inside. Adra told CNN that the military also blocked an ambulance from a village road.
The settlers attacked Adra’s family members, according to an interview with CNN, after trespassing on his olive grove. The Israeli military said its raid was in response to stones hurled at Israeli civilians, a claim that Adra denied.
In a series of short video clips posted by Adra to Instagram, a man is shown driving an ATV erratically towards a group of people and a man is seen chasing a woman, identified as a solidarity activist, and pushing her down by the neck or upper back to the ground, where she curls into a fetal position.
Adra claimed to CNN that he has filed dozens of complaints against the settlers for bringing their sheep to graze in his olive trees, yet the police have not done anything to stop them.
Adra has not yet responded to Hyperallergic‘s request for comment.
Adra and the film’s three other codirectors won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature Film in March, using their allotted two-minute victory speech to plead for the end of violence against Palestinians. The film captured harrowing scenes of bulldozer-razed homes and settler violence in Adra’s home village. The film does not have a distributor in the US.
In the final scene of the film, Adra’s cousin Zakaria al-Adra is shot in the stomach.
“About two months ago, I became a father, and my hope for my daughter is that she will not have to live the same life I am living now, always fearing violence, home demolitions, and forced displacement that my community, Masafer Yatta, is facing every day,” Adra said in the speech.
In March, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences issued an apology to co-director Ballal after it failed to name him and the film No Other Land in its initial statement that alluded to his attack. Thousands of film industry workers joined a petition published last week vowing to boycott Israeli cinema institutions and festivals in solidarity with Palestinian filmmakers.
