Yuval Abraham (; born 1995) is an Israeli investigative journalist, film director, and Arabic–Hebrew translator. He rose to international prominence when he co-directed '' No Other Land'' (2024), an Oscar-winning documentary about the

Israel Defense Forces The Israel Defense Forces (IDF; , ), alternatively referred to by the Hebrew-language acronym (), is the national military of the State of Israel. It consists of three service branches: the Israeli Ground Forces, the Israeli Air Force, and ...

and settler violence in the West Bank, and gave a pro-equality speech at the

74th Berlin International Film Festival The 74th annual Berlin International Film Festival, usually called the Berlinale, took place between 15 and 25 February 2024 in Berlin, Germany. Kenyan-Mexican actress Lupita Nyong'o was named the Jury President for the main competition. This ye ...

Biography

Based in

Jerusalem Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...

, Abraham was born to an Israeli middle-class family in the southern city of

Beersheba Beersheba ( / ; ), officially Be'er-Sheva, is the largest city in the Negev desert of southern Israel. Often referred to as the "Capital of the Negev", it is the centre of the fourth-most populous metropolitan area in Israel, the eighth-most p ...

. He is of

Mizrahi Jewish Mizrahi Jews (), also known as ''Mizrahim'' () in plural and ''Mizrahi'' () in singular, and alternatively referred to as Oriental Jews or ''Edot HaMizrach'' (, ), are terms used in Israeli discourse to refer to a grouping of Jews, Jewish c ...

and

Ashkenazi Jewish Ashkenazi Jews ( ; also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim) form a distinct subgroup of the Jewish diaspora, that Ethnogenesis, emerged in the Holy Roman Empire around the end of the first millennium Common era, CE. They traditionally spe ...

ancestry; his Jewish Yemenite grandfather was a fluent

Palestinian Arabic Palestinian Arabic (also known as simply Palestinian) is part of a dialect continuum comprising various mutually intelligible varieties of Levantine Arabic spoken by Palestinians in Palestine, which includes the State of Palestine, Israel, and t ...

speaker. One of his grandmothers was born in an Italian concentration camp in Libya, and one of his grandfathers lost most of his family in

the Holocaust The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...

. At 19, Abraham was enlisted and assigned to the

(IDF)'s Intelligence Corps, but he never assumed his role; after a week in training, he refused to serve for political and personal reasons and decided to leave the army. The process of leaving took a few weeks, during which he was assigned to be a

quartermaster Quartermaster is a military term, the meaning of which depends on the country and service. In land army, armies, a quartermaster is an officer who supervises military logistics, logistics and requisitions, manages stores or barracks, and distri ...

in the

Air Force An air force in the broadest sense is the national military branch that primarily conducts aerial warfare. More specifically, it is the branch of a nation's armed services that is responsible for aerial warfare as distinct from an army aviati ...

. After leaving the military, he did volunteer work with Israeli and Palestinian children at schools for two years. Learning Arabic and meeting Palestinians in the

West Bank The West Bank is located on the western bank of the Jordan River and is the larger of the two Palestinian territories (the other being the Gaza Strip) that make up the State of Palestine. A landlocked territory near the coast of the Mediter ...

, including staying with families as their homes were demolished by the IDF, was how Abraham became an outspoken critic of the Israeli military's occupation of Palestinians. He has worked in language education and taught Arabic. In 2019, Abraham reached out to London-based journalist Ahmed Alnaouq, who runs the Gaza writers' collective

We Are Not Numbers We Are Not Numbers (WANN) is a project established in 2015 by Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor to provide English-language writing workshops for young Palestinians in Gaza. It provides each participant with six months of training and men ...

(WANN), for an interview, and helped Alnaouq, who wanted the stories to reach a wider audience, connect with translators. Together, Abraham and Alnaouq founded Across the Wall, a platform where Palestinians' stories are translated into Hebrew with the aim of humanising Palestinians and challenging mainstream Israeli narratives that demonise them. The webpage reportedly received over a million visitors in 2021. The project was put on indefinite hiatus in November 2023 after 23 members of Alnaouq's family, including young children, were killed by Israeli bombing. As of 2024, Abraham works as a journalist and investigative reporter for the independent media outlets ''

+972 Magazine ''+972 Magazine'' is an Israeli left wing news and opinion online magazine, established in August 2010 by a collective of four Israeli writers in Tel Aviv. Noam Sheizaf, a co-founder and the ''+972'' chief executive officer, said they wanted to ...

'' and ''

Local Call In telephony, the term local call has the following meanings: # Any call using a single switching center; that is, not traveling to another telephone network; # A call made within a local calling area as defined by the local exchange carrier; # ...

'', having called them "the only places" he can "try to use my privilege to expose the mechanisms of oppression in our country, whether it's by documenting the demolition of a Palestinian family's home in Jerusalem or speaking to refugees in Jenin". He also worked for Social TV, contributed to publications such as ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'', ''

The Nation ''The Nation'' is a progressive American monthly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper ...

'', and appeared on networks such as ''

Democracy Now! ''Democracy Now!'' is an hour-long TV, radio, and Internet news program based in Manhattan and hosted by journalists Amy Goodman (who also acts as the show's executive producer), Juan González, and Nermeen Shaikh. The show, which airs live ...

'' and

CNN Cable News Network (CNN) is a multinational news organization operating, most notably, a website and a TV channel headquartered in Atlanta. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable ne ...

''No Other Land''

Abraham co-directed, co-filmed and featured in the documentary '' No Other Land'' with

Basel Adra Basel Adra (or Al-Adra; or ; born June 13, 1996) is a State of Palestine, Palestinian film director, lawyer and journalist. He has documented attempts by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to expel Palestinian villagers from the Israeli occupation ...

alongside Hamdan Ballal and Rachel Szor, about Adra's long-term attempts to resist

Israeli settler violence Palestinians are the target of violence by Israeli settlers and their supporters, predominantly in the West Bank. In November 2021, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz discussed the steep rise in the number of incidents between settlers and Pal ...

and displacement from his home in

Masafer Yatta Masafer Yatta (, also spelled Mosfaret Yatta) is a collection of 19 Palestinians, Palestinian hamlets which comprise a D-level Municipality (Palestinian Authority), municipality in the southern West Bank, in the Hebron Governorate of Palestine, ...

. The group had no experience in documentary filmmaking and initially approached the story as activists and journalists. Working together for over five years, with Adra and Ballal having footage including home videos from Adra's family, the documentary depicts Adra befriending Abraham and juxtaposes Adra's life under occupation with Abraham's life of freedom. ''No Other Land'' opened in February 2024 to critical acclaim at the

(Berlinale), where it won two awards: The Panorama Audience Award for Best Documentary Film and the Berlinale Documentary Film Award. In his acceptance speech, Abraham called for a ceasefire in Gaza and for the "situation of

apartheid Apartheid ( , especially South African English: , ; , ) was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. It was characterised by an ...

... ndinequality" between himself and Adra in the

occupied West Bank The West Bank, including East Jerusalem, has been under military occupation by Israel since 7 June 1967, when Israeli forces captured the territory, then ruled by Jordan, during the Six-Day War. The status of the West Bank as a militarily oc ...

to end. This drew accusations of antisemitism toward the event from Israeli media and German politicians such as

Kai Wegner Kai Wegner (born 15 September 1972) is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who has been serving as Governing Mayor of Berlin since April 2023. He served as a member of the Bundestag, the German federal parliament, from 2 ...

. After receiving death threats and a right-wing mob searching for him at his family's house in

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

, Abraham was forced to cancel his flight back home. Abraham made a viral statement on social media: "The appalling misuse of this word... to silence Israelis like me who support a ceasefire... empties the word antisemitism of meaning and thus endangers Jews all over the world". He found it "particularly outraging" coming from German politicians and also expressed concern for Adra's safety "under a military occupation surrounded by violent settlements". The

Committee to Protect Journalists The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in New York City, with correspondents around the world. CPJ promotes press freedom and defends the rights of journalists. The '' American Journalism ...

(CPJ) urged authorities to protect Abraham and his family. In an interview on Israeli television, Abraham said he found it most difficult that his mother paid a price for his speech when a mob came to his house to search for him, causing her to leave, adding that he accepted the criticism of those who scolded him for not mentioning the Israeli hostages held in Gaza in his speech, saying "in retrospect, I would have mentioned the hostages", noting the speech was short and unplanned as they did not expect to win, and that calling for a ceasefire benefited the hostages too.

References

External links

*
Articles archive at +972 Magazine
{{DEFAULTSORT:abraham, yuval 1995 births Living people Writers from Beersheba Arabic–Hebrew translators Israeli documentary film directors Israeli people of Yemeni-Jewish descent 21st-century Israeli journalists Israeli male journalists Language teachers Jewish Israeli activists for Palestinian solidarity Israeli activists for Palestinian solidarity Jewish Israeli anti-racism activists Jewish Israeli anti-war activists Jewish Israeli anti-Zionists Directors of Best Documentary Feature Academy Award winners Producers of Best Documentary Feature Academy Award winners Mass media people from Beersheba