Awdah Hathaleen, a Palestinian activist and community leader who worked on the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, was fatally shot by an Israeli settler in the West Bank on July 28, per The Guardian. Hathaleen was 31. “I can hardly believe it. My dear friend Awdah was slaughtered this evening,” Palestinian journalist Basel Adra, one of the four co-directors of No Other Land, tweeted on July 28. “He was standing in front of the community centre 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.” Israeli journalist and co-director Yuval Abraham reported the news of the shooting on social media alongside a video of the alleged culprit. “Residents identified Yinon Levi, sanctioned by the EU and US, as the shooter,” Abraham wrote. “This is him in the video firing like crazy.” (President Donald Trump removed the U.S. sanction on Levi in January.)
Local activists told The Guardian a settler drove a bulldozer through their land and used the blade of the machine to knock down a resident who asked him to stop. When residents then started throwing stones, Levi allegedly came out of the settlement and started firing. One of the bullets hit Hathaleen, who was standing away from the confrontation. The Israeli military acknowledged the shooting by claiming that an Israeli had opened fire on what they described as a group of “terrorists” in a statement per Al Jazeera; Israeli police said that an Israeli citizen was arrested for questioning in the incident. No charges have been filed against Levi, The Guardian reports. Abraham claimed that Levi had instructed soldiers to arrest four of Hathaleen’s family members after killing Hathaleen. “They are still jailed while he was just released for house arrest,” he wrote in a July 29 tweet. “A system which punishes the victims (who are under military law) and rewards the shooter (who is under civilian law).”
No Other Land depicts the destruction in the occupied West Bank territory Masafer Yatta, which includes the village of Umm al-Khair, where Hathaleen was killed. In March, less than a month after the film won Best Documentary Feature at the Oscars, Palestinian co-director Hamdan Ballal was injured in an attack by Israeli settlers in another Masafer Yatta village, Susya. “Palestinians in the village have been under physical attack by settlers almost daily,” Adra told The Guardian at the time. “The settlers’ violence is increasing here. Maybe it’s a revenge for the movie and the Oscar.”
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“This is how Israel erases us — one life at a time,” director Basel Adra wrote in a tribute to the 31-year-old Palestinian activist.
