No Other Land (an excerpt from When Trauma Doesn't End)

[Here is an excerpt from my most recent Substack post in which I included this reflection on watching No Other Land. It will make the most sense if you read the whole post on "When Trauma Doesn't End" on Substack.]

...Last week, I watched the Oscar-winning documentary, No Other Land, (it is available to stream at no cost here) co-directed by Palestinians and Israelis: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Hamdan Ballal, and Rachel Szor. Here is another ongoing trauma that has persisted much longer. The filming focuses on the West Bank expulsions in Masafer Yatta and was completed just after the brutal Hamas attacks and abductions of October 7, 2023 that triggered the intense escalation of Israeli atrocities in Gaza (the film primarily covers 2019-2023). The ongoing reality of events depicted in the film has recently been underlined by the killing of Awdah Hathaleen, a Palestinian activist who also worked on the film.

Of course, one could name other ongoing atrocities that persist even if they make the news less often – events in Sudan, Myanmar, Haiti… There are so many other places that we just grow numb when we try to take it all in. That numbness may actually be a point of commonality that draws us together.

A scene from No Other Land has a certain resonance in this way for western viewers: Basel sits in his West Bank village and scrolls on his phone because there is “nothing to do” despite all the stress and threat. Our experiences might be poles apart, and yet we share the temptation to distract ourselves and disengage in the face of our powerlessness to do more when so much more needs to be done. We can taste this depression from afar; how much more must that be a reality for those who face the ongoing threat daily.

What does healing mean when the trauma doesn’t end? Can one emerge from depression when one is still so powerless in the face of so much danger?...

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