The Oscar winning Palestinian/Israeli film ‘No Other Land’ will be shown at the Phoenix Cinema, Kirkwall on Thursday 24 April. There will be two showings, 1pm and 7.30pm.

Winner of the Best Documentary Feature Oscar, nominated for the Best Documentary BAFTA, as well as winning and receiving nominations for multiple other awards.

This is a special screening of the Oscar winning documentary, showing in collaboration with Amnesty International and Orkney Friends of Palestine. There will be a live introduction before the film, alongside a display of information and Palestinian Fairtrade products for sale in the cinema foyer.

For half a decade, a Palestinian activist films his community being destroyed by Israel’s occupation, as he builds an unlikely alliance with an Israeli journalist who wants to join his fight.

Basel Adra, a young Palestinian activist from Masafer Yatta, has been fighting his community’s mass expulsion by the Israeli occupation since childhood. Basel documents the gradual erasure of Masafer Yatta, as soldiers destroy the homes of families – the largest single act of forced transfer ever carried out in the occupied West Bank. He crosses paths with Yuval, an Israeli journalist who joins his struggle, and for over half a decade they fight against the expulsion while growing closer. Their complex bond is haunted by the extreme inequality between them: Basel, living under a brutal military occupation, and Yuval, unrestricted and free.

This film, was co-created during the darkest, most terrifying times in the region, as an act of creative resistance to Apartheid and a search for a path towards equality and justice. Directed by a Palestinian-Israeli collective of four young activists – Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Rachel Szor.

Orkney Peace Vigil

On Saturday 12 April, peace campaigners in Orkney will meet on the Kirk Green, Broad Street, Kirkwall between 1 and 2pm as they continue to highlight the Gaza Genocide. Except for a brief pause when there was a ceasefire, the islanders have been meeting since October 2023 and are joined with visitors to Orkney who want to share in their calls for an immediate ceasefire, the unhindered delivery of humanitarian aid, and the release of all hostages.

Last week’s vigil coincided with Palestine Children’s Day.

Over 17,000 children have been slaughtered in Gaza since October 7 2023 by Israeli attacks. Almost 300 of those children were born and killed within that time period.

On 7 April, UNRWA, OCHA, UNICEF, UNOPS, WFP and WHO published a statement denouncing “acts of war in Gaza that show an utter disregard for human life” and calling on the international community to act “firmly, urgently and decisively to ensure the basic principles of international humanitarian law are upheld.”

In the statement, senior UN officials denounced the conditions people in the Gaza Strip are forced to endure, explaining that “More than 2.1 million people are trapped, bombed and starved again, while, at crossing points, food, medicine, fuel and shelter supplies are piling up, and vital equipment is stuck” and adding that over 1,000 children have been reported killed or injured in the first week after the ceasefire collapsed.

Fiona Grahame