Anti-Israel Propaganda Film ‘No Other Land’ Wins Oscar For Best Foreign Documentary

A pretty good night at the Oscars. No one shouted from the back of the Dolby Theater “Spread the Intifada” or “From the River to the Sea/Palestine Will Be Free.” No Palestinian flags were suddenly unfurled in the midst of Conan O’Brien’s opening remarks. No one held up a sign saying “End the Genocide.” In fact, the award for Best Actor went to Adrien Brody, whose parents are Hungarian Jews, and his grandparents were Holocaust survivors. The award for Best Actress went to Mikey Madison, who is Jewish. When Brody went up to accept his statue, and offered some brief words, he included a reference to antisemitism.

But at the same time, there was the by-now de rigueur nod to the poor Palestinians. This year the pro-Palestinian presence made itself felt with the film, “No Other Land,” made by two Palestinians and two far-left Jewish film-makers, that won the prize for Best Documentary.

More on this propaganda film can be found here: “The lies behind Oscar winner ‘No Other Land,'” Elder of Ziyon, March 3, 2025:

Last night, the film “No Other Land” won the Academy Award for Best Documentary.

It is described at the film site “Deadline” as exploring “root causes of enmity as the filmmakers chronicle the Israeli military’s incremental expulsion of the West Bank community of Masafer Yatta — home to 20 ancient Palestinian villages.”

That is a myth. There were not 20 ancient Palestinian villages there. All of structures in the area were built since the 1980s, deliberately as a land grab of state lands.

Here is the entire history of the area as described by Wikipedia, today:

In 1881, the British Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF) noted the following places: Shảb el Butm, meaning ‘the spur of the terebinth’, Tuweil esh Shîh, meaning ‘the peak or ridge of Artemisia’, Khirbet el Fekhît, meaning ‘the ruin of the fissure’, and Khirbet Bîr el ‘Edd, meaning ‘the ruin of the perennial well’. At Khirbet Bîr el ‘Edd, PEF noted “traces of ruins, and a cistern”, while at Khirbet el Fekhît, they noted “traces of ruins, and a cave.”

Here is the PEF map showing the four (not twenty!) places:

The British found no villages, no population, just traces of old ruins.

In 1981, then Agriculture Minister Ariel Sharon was alarmed at the spread of illegal Palestinian structures moving towards this area. He proposed to turn the area into a firing zone for IDF training.  “I want to tell the representatives of the general staff, we want to offer you additional training areas. Additional training areas must be closed in at the border, [between] the bottom of the Hebron Hills and the Judean Desert. In light of that phenomenon – the spreading of the Arab villagers on the mountainside toward the desert….We have an interest in expanding and enlarging the shooting zones there, in order to keep these areas, which are so vital, in our hands.”

There is no doubt that his purpose was political to keep the areas empty in light of Arab expansion towards this desert. There is also no doubt that at the time, there were no permanent structures there yet.

Remember, all of these areas were without a single Arab structure until the 1990s. They were unbuilt-on lands that belonged to the state of Israel. According to the Mandate for Palestine, Article 6, the U.K. as holder of the Mandate was supposed to “encourage close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes.” That’s right — the Palestinians chose to build on state lands, which was in direct contravention of the Mandate for Palestine’s express provisions, and against the laws of Israel. The Arabs were trying to spread into areas belonging to the Israeli state. It is they who are defying the law, as they try to claim waste and state lands, and even lands owned by absentee Jewish owners, by building on them in Judea and Samaria.

The Arabs are still there in their hamlets, and vow to fight eviction as they have turned their baseless claim into an example of Israeli “ethnic cleansing.” And now the Oscar awarded to this meretricious film, will give them greater hope that they can continue to occupy state-owned land, and in so doing, also make life harder for the IDF which will be deprived of a training ground.