Palestinian director and Oscar winner Hamdan Ballal said in an interview that Israeli settlers, assisted by two Israeli Defense Forces(IDF) soldiers, attacked him and beat him with rifle butts in front of his house, threatening to kill him.
Ballal, one of the directors of the documentary ‘No Other Land‘, which has won numerous awards and deals with the destruction of villages in the West Bank, recounted in an interview how two soldiers first surrounded him while a settler attacked him, then violently struck him on the head and threatened him with a gun.
“It all started on Monday around 6 p.m.,” said Ballal, who was released on Tuesday after being held by Israeli forces at a police station in the West Bank. “We had just finished breaking our fast for Ramadan in Susya, in the Masafer Yatta area, south of Hebron, when someone called me and said that settlers had entered our village.”
Some of the settlers were armed with clubs and knives, and one was carrying an M16 rifle, witnesses stated. Among them was also a group of Israeli soldiers who accompanied them into the village where Ballal lives.
“Since I work for the human rights organization “Haqel: In Defense of Human Rights“ and I am a photographer, I went there to document the events,” he said. “I took three or four photos, but I realized that the situation was getting worse. There were dozens of settlers becoming increasingly aggressive.”
According to activist Josh Kimelman from the Center for Jewish Nonviolence (CJNV), masked settlers attacked Palestinian residents with clubs, including a group of Jewish activists, smashing car windows and slashing tires. A video shown by the group shows a masked settler pushing and hitting two activists at night.
“At that moment, I thought about my family, who were at home,” said Ballal. “I ran to them and told my wife, ‘Lock the house and keep the children inside.’ They could attack me, but that wouldn’t harm my family.”
A settler, accompanied by two soldiers, came to Ballal’s house. The soldiers fired into the air to prevent anyone from helping Ballal, who was crying out for help.
“The soldiers pointed their guns at me while the settler started beating me from behind,” Ballal said. “They threw me to the ground, and the settler hit me on the head. Then the soldier joined in – he struck me on the head with the butt of his rifle. After that, he fired into the air. I don’t understand Hebrew, but I realized that he said the next shot would be at me. At that moment, I thought I was going to die.”
Injured, handcuffed, and blindfolded, Ballal was taken along with two other Palestinians into a military vehicle and then to a police station in the Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba, where they spent the night on the floor under freezing air conditioning.
Ballal’s lawyer, Lea Tsemel, said they received minimal medical assistance for the injuries from the attack and that she was unable to access her clients for several hours after their arrest.
“It was a revenge attack because of our film,” said Ballal. “I heard the voices of soldiers laughing… I heard the word ‘Oscar.'”
Earlier this month, Ballal and the other directors of ‘No Other Land‘, which depicts life under Israeli occupation, appeared at the 96th Academy Awards in Los Angeles to accept the Oscar for Best Documentary.
This Israeli-Palestinian project has won numerous international awards, starting with Berlinale 2024, but has sparked outrage in Israel and abroad. In Miami, there was even a proposal to terminate a contract with a cinema that screened the film. Israel’s Minister of Culture called the Oscar win “a sad moment for the world of cinema.”
“We won the Oscar just three weeks ago, and the violence has escalated,” Ballal said. “Not just against me, not just against activists and other crew members, but against all the residents.”
The Israeli military declared Masafer Yatta in the southern West Bank a “military training zone” in the 1980s and ordered the eviction of its residents, who are mostly Arab Bedouins. About 1.000 people remained, but soldiers regularly demolish homes, tents, water tanks, and olive groves, and Palestinians fear they will be completely expelled.
During the war in Gaza, Israel has killed hundreds of Palestinians in large-scale military operations in the West Bank, and settler attacks have also increased.
According to CJNV data, at least 43 violent attacks by Israeli illegal settlers have been recorded in the village of Susya since the beginning of the year.
“It won’t stop here,” Ballal said. “The settlers will continue attacking. Now I’m more afraid than ever before.”, N1 writes.
