Darkness has fallen on the West Bank. Phone screens light up the faces of Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham. One Palestinian, One Israeli, they are the co-creators of Academy Award Winning Documentary No Other Land. A phone chime propels us into action. Basel has been tipped off regarding the demolition of yet another village in Mafasser Yatta, a fully inhabited Palestinian village which the IDF has taken over and converted to a training ground. Basel runs through his own house, looking for a camera with which to document the imminent horror. By uploading the footage to social media, he will force us to reckon with the brutal demolition of homes, crying mothers, and screaming children, with a man shot point-blank range in the head in front of his family. No Other Land brings you up close—even if you wish it wouldn’t. The documentary forces us to realize that for the residents of Masafer Yatta, there is no escape. They have no other land.

Basel and Yuval drag us along ruthlessly. Cameras are everywhere. Basel runs to every demolition with a camera in hand and trains the lens on a soldier’s face. The soldiers have cameras too. As do the settlers (Israeli recipients of the land taken from Palestinians). As does the commander who watches his men, making sure they brutalize enough bodies and savage sufficient homes. He documents proof of the mission, like an Amazon delivery man who’s just successfully delivered a package. We, the viewers, watch these players as they watch each other. “They’re going to find you, traitor,” says a settler to Yuval, camera on his face. A chilling reminder that there is another side to this story. A side in which each home destroyed is a victory. 

In Palestine, to document is to grasp for power. This documentary is about clicks, likes, views. There is proof that this works: To get people to care about the kind father, Harun; to get people to care when a school crumbles and children hop out of windows as bulldozers head for their classrooms. To get people to care when armed settlers taunt the villagers: “This is not your land.” We watch as Basel’s eye sockets become hollower with exhaustion. We see Yuval drive back home to visit his mother, past the Israeli-only checkpoint. As they sit and smoke together back in the West Bank, Yuval dreams of a life in which his friend can come over to his house for dinner. “If there is a democracy,” says Yuval. “If,” laughs Basel, and keeps on smoking. 

In the cleverest twist of all, we see ourselves watching. They get clicks, they get likes. They gain traction—on Democracy, Now! On Israeli talk shows, on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram. We see Western journalists visiting the mother whose son, Harun, has just been shot. He doesn’t want to see people, she insists. The reporters proceed to the cave anyway, and ask Basel to translate Harum’s moaned request for them to leave. They interview his mother, and she begs for help. For a single clean room, instead of the floor of a cave. As the journalists leave, Harum’s mother tells the camera that she prays God will take him instead of letting him suffer so long. His mother prays to God that her own son will die. 

And he does die. A clean room is an impossibility. The screen goes black. In what resembles an epigraph, we are shown the last piece of footage Basel takes in his village. An armed settler shoots his cousin dead on the street. His mothers scream can be heard from off-screen. Yuval asks: “we make them feel something, then what?” 

That is the question: then what? After a year and a half of genocide, 40000 deaths, many of which we have watched, on Instagram of all places, killings which murderers own proudly–  then what? You watch the movie– then what? I say “you watch the movie” because you *should* watch it. Ignorance is no longer a reasonable excuse. In his Oscars acceptance speech, Basel says that he hopes his newborn daughter will not have the same life he lives now. “We call on the world to stop the injustice and stop the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people,” Basel says, on the biggest stage in Hollywood.  The answer is clear—Now, it is time we act.