Mass famine in Gaza, the deliberate result of Israeli policy, and continued Zionist terror in the illegally occupied West Bank—that’s the appalling situation at present.

On Monday, according to eyewitnesses and journalists, an Israeli fascist-settler shot and killed Palestinian activist Odeh Hathalin (aka Awdah Hathaleen), who worked on the award-winning documentary film No Other Land in cold blood and in broad daylight.

Hamdan Ballal, one of the film’s four directors , which won the best documentary feature at the 2025 Academy Awards, was beaten by a mob of Israeli settlers in March and detained by the military.

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Video footage of Monday’s horrifying incident has circulated widely. Hathalin, 31, was a teacher from Masafer Yatta in the South Hebron Hills, who played a supporting role in No Other Land.

One of the film’s other co-directors, Yuval Abraham, posted video on X with the comment:

An Israeli settler just shot Odeh Hadalin in the lungs, a remarkable activist who helped us film No Other Land in Masafer Yatta. Residents identified Yinon Levi, sanctioned by the EU and US, as the shooter. This is him in the video firing like crazy.

Basel Adra, a third co-director of No Other Land, which documents Zionist crimes in the West Bank, also uploaded video, with this comment:

This is the settler who killed our dear friend Awdah Hathaleen. At the end of the video, he fires the bullet that took the life of Awdah. … Yinon Levi, a settler sanctioned by 9 countries (now 8, because of Trump)

Adra went on

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.

The various videos show an individual, allegedly Yinon Levi, pointing a gun at the unarmed Hathalin and pulling the trigger.

The Guardian reports:

According to activists from Umm al-Khair in the south Hebron Hills, the killing happened after a settler in a bulldozer drove through their land, destroying trees and property. The village sits right below the Israeli settlement of Carmel, founded in 1980.

The report continued:

When a resident approached to ask the driver of the bulldozer to stop, the driver knocked him down with the blade of the bulldozer. Residents began to throw stones, and Levi allegedly emerged from the settlement and began firing, the eyewitnesses said. Awdah Hathaleen, who was standing a distance away from the confrontation, was then struck by a bullet.

In other words, the entire incident was a Zionist-organized provocation aimed at creating a pretext for the violent attack then carried out. Whether Hathalin was the intended target all along cannot be determined at this point.

Levi, a notorious thug, was briefly detained Monday by Israeli authorities and then released to house arrest. “A Magistrate Court in Jerusalem declined to keep him in custody. Israeli daily Haaretz reported that Levi faced charges of manslaughter and unlawful firearm use in connection with the killing,” writes Al Jazeera. There will of course be no punishment, or at most a slap on the wrist for this murderer.

At least 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank since October 2023. Some 9,500 have been injured and 6,800 displaced, while 3,232 structures have been demolished by Israeli forces or settlers, working hand in hand.

Levi was such a brazen criminal that he was sanctioned by the European Union and even the Biden administration. The EU explained in April 2024 that Levi

has taken part in multiple violent acts against neighbouring villages from his residence in the Mitarim farm illegal outpost. This notably includes storming and damaging houses of Palestinian families, including in the presence of women and children, as well as having dogs set on Palestinian shepherds to physically attack them while letting his herd graze on their privately owned lands. He is therefore responsible for serious and widespread human rights violations or abuses.

In February 2024, the US State Department, according to the New York Times, asserted that Levi had led settler groups “that assaulted Palestinian and Bedouin civilians, threatened them with additional violence if they did not leave their homes, burned their fields and destroyed their property.”

The Times added that the Israeli Supreme Court was hearing a case brought by Palestinians living near Hebron alleging that on October 16, 2023

Mr. Levi, accompanied by Israeli soldiers, entered the Palestinian village of Susiya on a tractor and participated in the destruction of olive trees, crops and water wells, prompting residents to flee the village.

Al Jazeera notes that the so-called sanctions against individual fascists in the West Bank are a form of “political theater” practiced by the US, the European powers, Australia and Canada.

Not only have these sanctions had no impact, but by singling out a few settlers rather than addressing the broader machinery of settler colonialism, they also allow the Israeli regime to escape accountability by presenting settler violence as an aberration rather than an extension of state policy.

In June 2024, the Associated Press ran an interview with Levi in an article headlined, “Israeli settlers in the West Bank were hit with international sanctions. It only emboldened them.”

AP noted that

When the banks froze his accounts, his community raised thousands of dollars for him, and Israel’s finance minister vowed to intervene on sanctioned settlers’ behalf. Two months after sanctions were issued, Levi was granted access to his money.

Levi and other sanctioned settlers told the AP that the measures were, “at most, an annoyance.”

In the US there is a division of labor. The Biden administration imposed the toothless sanctions on Levi and several other individuals and groups, a gesture in the direction of covering up its central role in the genocide, and Trump, as soon as he was in power, removed them.

Various Palestinians in two hamlets in the South Hebron Hills told AP in June last year they were being pushed off their land,

with several alleging Levi has threatened them since being sanctioned. One man said that in February, while out with his sheep, Levi held him at gunpoint, recounted all the places he’d forced people away, and threatened to kill him if he returned. 

“He told me, ‘I displaced people from Zanuta to ad-Dhahiriya ... I am from the family of the farm of mad people,’” said Ahmed, who spoke on condition that only his first name be used, over retaliation fears.

These are the deranged, fascist elements let loose on the defenseless Palestinian population. The hypocritical sanctions and hand-wringing of the Western powers will not fool anyone. Levi and his ilk are doing the dirty work of imperialism in the region.