A prominent Palestinian rights group has sharply criticized the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, alleging the film, which was directed by a Palestinian-Israeli collective, violates the guidelines of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. The BDS movement opposes cooperation with Israeli companies operating in the occupied West Bank.
The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), aligned with BDS, has called out No Other Land for allegedly violating so-called “anti-normalization” guidelines that, the group argues, make the idea of Israeli “occupation, apartheid, and settler colonialism seem normal and establishing normal relations with the Israeli regime.”
No Other Land seems an unlikely target for pro-Palestinian groups. The film chronicles the repeated destruction and demolition of the Masafer Yatta community in the occupied West Bank and the alliance that develops between Palestinian journalist and co-director Basel Adra, and Israeli journalist and co-director Yuval Abraham. Since its debut at last year’s Berlinale, where it won the best documentary prize, the film has come under attack from right-wing and pro-Israeli critics. Israel’s culture and sports minister Miki Zohar called the film’s Oscar win “a sad moment for the world of cinema,” accusing the documentary of “defamation of Israel.”
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization in the U.S., has thrown its support behind the film, publicly calling for U.S. distributors and streaming platforms to distribute the movie stateside. (Despite the Oscar win, No Other Land still does not have a U.S. distributor.) “The American people deserve the right to see this film,” CAIR said.
In its statement on the film first published on March 5, PACBI acknowledges “Israel, its massive lobby groups, and its anti-Palestinian racist partners in…
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