Bites, Camera, Fashion: Bites, Camera, Fashion is a column from Davey McNelly, who is disabled, likes films and makes poor choices while trying to simplify his life.
You can pretend something isn’t happening. Up to a certain extent, you can pretend whatever you want, but eventually reality and truth win out. Here are some examples: Duke’s is the best mayonnaise, Sean Connery was the best Bond and Athens can’t make bricks accessible.
(Seriously — can we have just ADA-compliant crosswalk Uptown?)
One of these undeniable truths for me is that my spinal muscular atrophy is beginning to progress again. This means that I am seeing consistent weakening in what I’m able to do. For instance, I am typing this through voice to text. It’s a big adjustment, being a writer, and realizing you can’t write how you have your whole life.
I have taken a medication over the last six years that halted the progression. But now, for whatever reason, it is not working as well.
To add insult to injury, the State of Ohio has cut my personal care funding by about 18%, with more cuts on the way. In order to make progress on my novel, my work, and this column that you’re all so anxiously waiting for, I need to adjust my reality to fit the truth.
It is fine for me to take time to mourn this loss, but I have to move forward. And films, fashion, and food don’t review themselves.
Which brings me to this film review.
“No Other Land” documents the life of a family living in Masafer Yatta, a collection of connected villages in the occupied West Bank of Palestine. It documents clearly, over a period of about four years, the destruction of these villages by the Israeli government and Jewish settlers. It is infuriating and it shows a reality that many choose not to see.
Directed by Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, and Rachel Szor — two Israeli, two Palestinian — “No Other Land” recently won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature.
Bites
One of the documentary subjects, an Israeli Jew, takes an Arabic class after high school. Able to read Arabic, he is able to understand what is happening outside of news published in Hebrew. He begins going to the West Bank and seeing with his own eyes what is happening, befriending a Palestinian man about his age. He begins to see how Palestinians are unable to travel to get food and often have to eat whatever is available to them as their homes are destroyed by Israeli bulldozers.
So much of what is marketed as Israeli food has been taken from Palestinians based on what is regionally available: hummus, eggplant, olives, and the like. Writing that just made me hungry.
One of the lies that Jewish settlers tell to make the occupation of Palestine more appetizing is that there is no culture in Palestine. In reality, Palestinians that I have known and met have a vibrant culture that dates back hundreds of years and is intricately tied to their homeland.
In this film, goats, sheep, olive trees, are all shown and used. Then Israeli forces burn and bulldoze the fields where they are kept.
I saw the film at the Athena Cinema, which still has numerous accessibility issues that haven’t been addressed. I did eat some of the Shagbark popcorn and snuck in dark chocolate and cashews as a snack.
Camera
It is horrifying to watch as bulldozers knock over homes, over and over. The homes are then rebuilt by Palestinian families. And then bulldozed over again, and again, and again. The families then move into surrounding caves, not wanting to relinquish their lands. Israeli military forces then move in and evict them from the caves. Eventually, Israeli forces bulldoze the community’s school, barely giving time for the teachers and students to leave.
What was even more disheartening about watching this documentary is seeing so many Israeli soldiers standing by and/or threatening with guns these villagers who have nothing to defend themselves with and very limited possessions in general. Palestinians are shot. One person in the village is paralyzed.
The thing is, all Israelis, with very few exceptions, serve in the military. This means that all of society sees what is happening and is able to form a false narrative to justify their actions, to pull the wool over their own eyes.
The Palestinian man in the film organizes with others to lead a protest, walking down the road with signs that say “Palestinian Lives Matter.” In the documentary, Israeli army vehicles come and disperse the protesters. Then, in retaliation, Israeli intelligence and military comes to the man’s village to try to capture him and put him in prison. When they can’t find him, they take his father instead. Then Jewish settlers start coming to the villages and threatening the inhabitants, shooting guns and vandalizing property.
The Jewish man in the film asks his Palestinian friend why he isn’t working, when he has a law degree. The Palestinian replies that the only job available to him is construction. It took me until after the movie to realize what he meant. The only construction available to him would be building Israeli settlements where Palestinian villages used to sit. The courts are Israeli, of course, and routinely issue eviction orders to Palestinians that have been living on their land and in their homes for hundreds of years. Even then, he has hope. He knows that reality has to win, eventually.
Doesn’t it?
Fashion
Look, I wish this was a funnier column.
I also saw the new Looney Tunes movie. But I can’t bring myself to write about that.
What has to become fashionable, especially as American Jews, is to question other American Jews about Israel and distance ourselves from it, while at the same time voicing our opinions that the United States should stop sending bombs and stop allowing this occupation to continue. It should become fashionable for American Jews to accept reality that a genocide is taking place and that peace in Palestine is possible if enough people want it.
