Awdah Hathaleen, a beloved Palestinian activist and instructor who labored on the Oscar-winning documentary movie No Different Land (2024), was shot and killed by an Israeli settler on Monday in Umm al-Khair, within the Occupied West Financial institution.
Yuval Abaraham, an Israeli investigative journalist and co-director of No Different Land, shared a distressing video on X of a settler recognized as Yinon Levi brandishing a firearm in entrance of a bulldozer and firing.
At one level within the video, Levi is seen pointing his gun upward and firing towards a fence. A separate X put up from movie co-director Basel Adra reveals medical provides scattered close to a pool of blood behind a close-by fence. Hathaleen reportedly had been standing about 150 ft away from Levi at a close-by group heart when he was shot within the chest, per Abrahm’s account.
Reached on X, Abraham instructed Hyperallergic that Hathaleen assisted the Israeli-Palestinian director collective in filming the documentary, which chronicled Palestinian mass expulsion from close by Masafer Yatta. Abraham didn’t specify which scenes Hathaleen labored on.
“I can hardly believe it,” co-director Adra, the movie’s predominant topic, wrote on X. “My dear friend Awdah was slaughtered this evening. He was standing in front of the community center in his village when a settler fired a bullet that pierced his chest and took his life. This is how Israel erases us — one life at a time.”
Awdah Hathaleen (proper) and No Different Land co-director Basel Adra (left) (screenshot Isa Farfan/Hyperallergic through X)
Levi has a infamous historical past of participating in settler violence towards Palestinians. He was one of many preliminary 4 Israeli settlers sanctioned by the US final yr underneath the Biden administration. President Trump has since repealed these restrictions, nonetheless, which included visa bans. The State Division accused Levi of usually main teams of settlers to assault Palestinians and Bedouins and making threats of additional violence except they left their properties. Israeli police arrested Levi following this week’s assault, however he was later launched on home arrest.
In March, Palestinian movie co-director Hamdan Ballal was crushed by Israeli settlers and subsequently arrested by Israeli troopers.
No Different Land generated spectacular accolades within the movie competition circuit, securing the Oscar award for finest feature-length documentary. Throughout their Oscar acceptance speech, the movie’s 4 administrators known as to “stop injustice and to stop the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people.” Regardless of its important acclaim, the movie doesn’t have a US distributor.
