This story originally appeared in Truthout on July 28, 2025. It is shared here with permission.
Palestinian activist who helped film the No Other Land documentary highlighting Israel’s violent occupation of the West Bank, Awdah Hathaleen, was shot and killed by an Israeli settler on Monday, according to one of the film’s directors.
Israeli co-filmmaker Yuval Abraham posted about Hadalin’s death on social media on Monday. “An Israeli settler just shot [Hathaleen] in the lungs, a remarkable activist who helped us film No Other Land in Masafer Yatta,” Abraham wrote. About an hour later, Abraham wrote that Hathaleen had succumbed to the shooting. “[Awdah] just died. Murdered,” said Abraham.
“I can hardly believe it. My dear friend Awdah was slaughtered this evening. He was standing in front of the community center 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,” said Basel Adra, activist and Palestinian co-director of No Other Land.
Accompanying Abraham’s post was a video of the settler angrily facing a group, wielding a handgun. He waves the gun around, firing it, and keeping his hand on the trigger as he paces and angrily pushes those trying to confront him.
Hathaleen was previously targeted by the U.S. government. Last month, he flew to the U.S. to do a speaking tour with his cousin, Eid Hathaleen, to speak in synagogues and churches. However, U.S. authorities detained and deported them upon arrival at the San Francisco airport.
He had previously reported about Israeli settler violence, and was a leader in his community advocating against Israel’s occupation of his village, Umm al-Khair in Masafer Yatta.
Wafa reported that two Palestinians had been injured in Umm al-Khair by Israeli settlers, who invaded the village with a bulldozer in an attack on Monday evening.
Palestinian activist Issa Amro, from Hebron, mourned the loss of Hathaleen.
“Israeli settlers have murdered our beloved hero, Awdah Hathaleen, from the Um Al-Khair community in Masafer Yatta,” Amro wrote on social media. “Awdah stood with dignity and courage against oppression. His loss is a deep wound to our hearts and our struggle for justice. May he rest in peace. We will never forget him.”
Abraham said that local residents identified Hathaleen’s killer as Yinon Levi, who lives in an illegal Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank. Levi was sanctioned by the Treasury Department under the Biden administration in April 2024, with officials saying that he “regularly led groups of violent extremists” in assaults on Palestinian and Bedouin communities in the West Bank. He was also sanctioned by the European Union around the same time.
President Donald Trump lifted the U.S. sanction on Levi and other Israeli settlers and settler groups on his first day in office this January. Even before that, however, the Biden administration’s and other international authorities’ sanctions on Israeli settlers were criticized as weak and ineffective, with Israeli leaders who are backing and often funding settler groups going unpunished.
In fact, Levi told The Associated Press last June that he only felt the financial impact of sanctions for a few weeks after banks froze his accounts. His community raised thousands of dollars for him, and Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a key architect of Israel’s de facto annexation of the West Bank, pledged to intervene to personally help take care of sanctioned settlers. The bank, which was supposed to freeze his assets, slowly lifted restrictions until he was able to access his money for whatever he wanted again.
“America thought it would weaken us, and in the end, they made us stronger,” Levi said at the time. Indeed, The Associated Press reported that local rights groups and settlers said that the sanctions only emboldened them.
This is just the latest settler attack on someone involved in making No Other Land. In March, just weeks after the documentary won an Oscar, an Israeli settler mob attacked and beat Palestinian filmmaker and activist Hamdan Ballal, in his home village of Susiya in Masafer Yatta. While he was in an ambulance to be treated for his injuries, Israeli soldiers invaded the vehicle and took him into custody. He emerged, bloody and bruised, saying that he has faced increased violence from settlers due to his role in making the film.
Israeli settlers and soldiers have intensified their violence in Masafer Yatta since the film won an Oscar, and Israeli authorities have now ordered a large swath of the region to be turned into a live-fire zone — effectively ordering the forcible transfer of over 1,200 Palestinians living in the region. Palestinians in the region report that Israel’s demolition of their homes is being fast-tracked by authorities.
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.