Basel Adra, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal and Yuval Abraham win the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature Film for “No Other Land” during the Oscars show at the 97th Academy Awards in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, US, March 2, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria

In an evening of glitz, red carpet pageantry, and self-congratulatory speeches at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, one Oscar win was as predictable as the show’s nearly four-hour runtime: Best Feature-Length Documentary.

The award went to the Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers behind No Other Land, a film chronicling Palestinian activist Basel Adra as he supposedly “risks arrest to document the destruction of his hometown” in Masafer Yatta, at the southern edge of the West Bank.

Hardly a shock.

Not only was it the frontrunner, but it ticked all the right boxes for an Academy that never misses a chance to celebrate a politically fashionable pick. And with Israel dominating the headlines since the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks and the ensuing war against the terrorist group, it didn’t take a fortune teller to predict this win.

Cue the victory speeches.

Adra took the stage alongside Israeli filmmaker Yuval Abraham, who used his moment to chastise the United States for blocking “a political solution, without ethnic supremacy, with national rights for both of our people.”

The line earned a rousing cheer — because what better way to celebrate cinematic achievement than by tossing out oversimplified, self-righteous slogans?

Also predictable? The media’s muddled reporting on No Other Land’s subject matter. Many outlets seemed convinced that Masafer Yatta is some ancient Palestinian village network, systematically uprooted in recent decades to make way for Israeli settlers.

Which, of course, is exactly the narrative the filmmakers wanted to push.

This is correct background information about Masafer Yatta that was portrayed wrongly in the movie that won the Oscar: https://t.co/GyeesTSePb

— Gil Hoffman (@Gil_Hoffman) March 3, 2025

The Truth About Masafer Yatta

The reality, as usual, is far less dramatic than the Oscar-winning version.

Historically, Masafer Yatta was a grazing ground for Bedouins and locals from the nearby town of Yatta — land they used but never permanently settled. Those who stayed for extended periods lived in caves, not in established villages.

In the early 1980s, the IDF designated the area as Training Zone 918, a military training ground. The arrangement was simple: locals could continue grazing their flocks, and the IDF would provide advance notice when live-fire exercises were scheduled. This system worked with little controversy for nearly two decades.

Then, in 1997, things shifted. Local Palestinians petitioned the Israeli High Court to revoke the training zone designation. At the same time, illegal construction ramped up. Permanent structures began appearing, first in small clusters and then expanding into what is now generously described as the “12 villages” of Masafer Yatta.

Under the Oslo Accords, Israel maintains full control over this area — known as Area C — until a final status agreement is reached. But that didn’t stop the creeping expansion, which military sources say wasn’t about housing a growing population but about creating political “facts on the ground.” Many structures, they report, stand empty, existing solely to inflate the appearance of a permanent Palestinian presence.

By 2000, the Israeli High Court had halted evacuations but explicitly banned further constructio — rules that were promptly ignored. The IDF offered compromises, allowing access on weekends, Jewish holidays, and for two months each year, all of which were rejected. It even approved permanent settlement in parts of the zone’s northwest section, but the legal battle dragged on.

After years of legal wrangling, the court ruled in favor of the IDF: the training zone designation stood, and illegal structures could be dismantled.

Yet despite breathless media reports of “displacement,” the reality remains: evacuations have been minimal, the illegal buildings are still there, and the so-called “villages” remain.

The Media’s Convenient Omissions

So naturally, by Monday morning, Israel woke up to a wave of skewed coverage about No Other Land’s win, all of it framing the Masafer Yatta dispute as somehow tied to Israeli settlers.

ABC News, for example, suggested the issue was part of Israel’s broader “settlement expansion,” stating:

Israel’s demolition efforts in the West Bank, on what Israel considers to be illegal structures, have largely been in an effort to clear the way for Israeli settlers to move into the region for reasons including religious beliefs and improved quality of life.

Meanwhile, CNN failed even to mention that the so-called “collection of villages” in the Hebron hills consists of indisputably illegal structures, while also tying the dispute to “the encroachment of Jewish settlers for decades.”

And the BBC? It didn’t even bother including the fact that Masafer Yatta is a military training ground, leaving readers with the entirely false impression that Israel cleared the area for settlers:

Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967. Israeli settlements in the territory are considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this. They have expanded over the past 55 years, becoming a focal point of violence and conflicting claims over land.”

And that was the story across the board — from NPR to The Hollywood Reporter. The facts were lost, and Masafer Yatta became yet another simplistic media tale in which Israel is, conveniently, the villain.

The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.

The post Media Spins ‘No Other Land’ Oscar Win Into Yet Another Fake ‘Israeli Settlers’ Story first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Families and supporters of Israeli hostages kidnapped during the deadly Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas gather to demand a deal that will bring back all the hostages held in Gaza, outside a meeting between hostage representatives and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in Jerusalem, Jan. 14, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad

Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said on Tuesday that Israel was ready to proceed to the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire deal, as long as Hamas was ready to release more of the 59 hostages it is still holding.

Fighting in Gaza has been halted since Jan. 19 under a truce arranged with US support and Qatari and Egyptian mediators, and Hamas has exchanged 33 Israeli hostages and five Thais for some 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees.

But the initial 42-day truce has expired and Hamas and Israel, which has blocked the entry of aid trucks into Gaza, remain far apart on broader issues including the postwar governance of Gaza and the future of Hamas itself.

“We are ready to continue to phase two,” Saar told reporters in Jerusalem as Arab leaders prepared to meet in Cairo to discuss a plan for ending the war permanently.

“But in order to extend the time or the framework, we need an agreement to release more hostages.”

Hamas says it wants to move ahead to the second phase negotiations that could open the way to a permanent end to the war with the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from the devastated Palestinian enclave and a return of the remaining 59 hostages taken in the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

But Israel says its hostages must be handed over for the truce to be extended and backs a plan to extend the ceasefire during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, which began on Saturday, until after the Jewish Passover holiday in April.

US President Donald Trump’s special Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff is due to visit the region in the next few days to discuss extending the ceasefire or moving ahead of phase two, the State Department said on Monday.

Saar denied that Israel had breached the agreement by not moving ahead to stage two negotiations. He said there was “no automaticity” between the stages, and he said Hamas had itself violated the agreement to allow aid into Gaza by seizing most of the supplies itself.

“It is a means to continue the war against Israel. It’s today the major part of Hamas income in Gaza,” he said.

Aid groups have said that looting and wrongful seizure of aid trucks into Gaza has been a major problem but Hamas, the Islamist terrorist group that seized power in Gaza in 2007, denies seizing aid for its own members.

Saar declined to comment on an Israeli media report that Israel had set a 10-day deadline to reach an agreement or resume fighting but said: “If we want to do it, we will do it.”

The post Israel Says It Needs Deal on Freeing Hostages to Extend Gaza Ceasefire Deal first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

The S-300 missile system is seen during the National Army Day parade ceremony in Tehran, Iran, April 17, 2024. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS

Several senior Russian missile specialists have visited Iran over the past year as the Islamic Republic has deepened its defense cooperation with Moscow, a Reuters review of travel records and employment data indicates.

The seven weapons experts were booked to travel from Moscow to Tehran aboard two flights on April 24 and Sept. 17 last year, according to documents detailing the two group bookings as well as the passenger manifest for the second flight.

The booking records include the men’s passport numbers, with six of the seven having the prefix “20.” That denotes a passport used for official state business, issued to government officials on foreign work trips and military personnel stationed abroad, according to an edict published by the Russian government and a document on the Russian foreign ministry’s website.

Reuters was unable to determine what the seven were doing in Iran.

A senior Iranian defense ministry official said Russian missile experts had made multiple visits to Iranian missile production sites last year, including two underground facilities, with some of the visits taking place in September. The official, who requested anonymity to discuss security matters, didn’t identify the sites.

A Western defense official, who monitors Iran’s defense cooperation with Russia and also requested anonymity, said an unspecified number of Russian missile experts visited an Iranian missile base, about 15 km (9 miles) west of the port of Amirabad on Iran’s Caspian Sea coast, in September.

Reuters couldn’t establish if the visitors referred to by the officials included the Russians on the two flights.

The seven Russians identified by Reuters all have senior military backgrounds, with two ranked colonel and two lieutenant-colonel, according to a review of Russian databases containing information about citizens’ jobs or places of work, including tax, phone, and vehicle records.

Two are experts in air-defense missile systems, three specialize in artillery and rocketry, while one has a background in advanced weapons development and another has worked at a missile-testing range, the records showed. Reuters was unable to establish whether all are still working in those roles as the employment data ranged from 2021 to 2024.

Their flights to Tehran came at a precarious time for Iran, which found itself drawn into a tit-for-tat battle with arch-foe Israel that saw both sides mount military strikes on each other in April and October.

Reuters contacted all the men by phone: five of them denied they had been to Iran, denied they worked for the military or both, while one declined to comment, and one hung up.

Iran’s defense and foreign ministries declined to comment for this article, as did the public relations office of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, an elite military force and internally designated terrorist organization that oversees Iran’s ballistic missile program. The Russian defense ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Cooperation between the two countries, whose leaders signed a 20-year military pact in Moscow in January, has already influenced Russia’s war on Ukraine, with large numbers of Iranian-designed Shahed drones deployed on the battlefield.

ROCKETS AND ARTILLERY

The flight booking information for the seven travelers was shown to Reuters by Hooshyaran-e Vatan, a group of activist hackers opposed to the Iranian government. The hackers said the seven were traveling with VIP status.

Reuters corroborated the information with the Russian passenger manifest for the September flight, which was provided by a source with access to Russian state databases. The news agency was unable to access a manifest for the earlier flight, so couldn’t verify that the five Russian specialists booked on it actually made the trip.

Denis Kalko, 48, and 46-year-old Vadim Malov were among the five Russian weapons experts whose seats were booked as a group on the April flight, the records showed.

Kalko worked at the defense ministry’s Academy for Military Anti-Aircraft Defense, tax records for 2021 show. Malov worked for a military unit that trains anti-aircraft missile forces, according to car ownership records for 2024.

Andrei Gusev, 45, Alexander Antonov, 43, and Marat Khusainov, 54, were also booked on the April flight. Gusev is a lieutenant-colonel who works as deputy head of the faculty of General Purpose Rockets and Artillery Munitions at the defense ministry’s Penza Artillery Engineering Institute, according to a 2021 news item on the institute’s website. Antonov has worked at the Main Rocket and Artillery Directorate of the Defense Ministry, according to car registration records from 2024, while bank data shows Khusainov, a colonel, has worked at the Kapustin Yar missile-testing range.

One of the two passengers onboard the second flight to Tehran in September was Sergei Yurchenko, 46, who has also worked at the Rocket and Artillery Directorate, according to undated mobile phone records. His passport number had the prefix “22”; Reuters was unable to determine what that signified though, according to the government edict on passports, it isn’t used for private citizens or diplomats.

The other passenger on the September flight was 46-year-old Oleg Fedosov. Residence records give his address as the office of the Directorate of Advanced Inter-Service Research and Special Projects. That is a branch of the defense ministry tasked with developing weapons systems of the future.

Fedosov had previously flown from Tehran to Moscow in October 2023, according to Russian border crossing records viewed by Reuters. On that occasion, as he did for the September 2024 flight, Fedosov used his passport reserved for official state business, the records showed.

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