Hebron: Israeli authorities released Oscar-winning Palestinian director who was detained by the army on Monday, after being attacked by Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank. His wife stated that settlers beat him in front of their home while he was filming the assault.
Hamdan Ballal and the other directors of “No Other Land,” which looks at the struggles of living under Israeli occupation, had mounted the stage at the 97th Academy Awards in Los Angeles earlier this month when it won the award for best documentary film.
Ballal and two other Palestinians detained with him were released Tuesday afternoon from a police station in the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba. Ballal had bruises on his face and blood on his clothes, and the three were driven to a hospital in the neighboring Palestinian city of Hebron, according to Associated Press journalists at the scene.
Their attorney, Lea Tsemel, said they spent the night on the floor of a military base while receiving only minimal care for their injuries from the attack. She had earlier said they were accused of throwing stones at a young settler, allegations they deny.
Kicked me like a football: Palestinian director
On Tuesday, March 25, Ballal – his face bruised and clothes still spotted with blood – recounted to The Associated Press how he was heavily beaten by an Israeli settler and soldiers the night before. The settler, he said, kicked his head “like a football” during a settler attack on his village.
The soldiers then detained him and two other Palestinians. Ballal said he was kept blindfolded for more than 20 hours, sitting on the floor under a blasting air-conditioner. The soldiers kicked, punched or hit him with a stick whenever they came on their guard shifts, he said. Ballal doesn’t speak Hebrew, but he said he heard them saying his name and the word “Oscar”.
“I realised they were attacking me specifically,” he said in an interview at a West Bank hospital after his release Tuesday.
“When they say ‘Oscar’, you understand. When they say your name, you understand.”
“All my body is in pain,” he told the AP immediately after his release as he walked, limping, toward a hospital in the nearby Palestinian city of Hebron.
Doctors at the hospital said Ballal had bruises and scratches all over his body, abrasions under his eye and a cut on his chin but no internal injuries. The two other detained Palestinians also had minor injuries.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to the claims that Ballal was beaten by soldiers.
The settler whom Ballal identified as his attacker, Shem Tov Luski, who has threatened Ballal in the past, denied he or the soldiers beat him and told the AP that he and other Palestinians in the village had thrown stones at his car.
He also said he didn’t know Ballal was an Oscar winner.
Three Palestinians detained on Monday
The Israeli military said on Monday it had detained three Palestinians suspected of hurling rocks as well as one Israeli civilian, who was soon released. Ballal denied throwing stones.
The attack took place on Monday night in the southern West Bank village of Susiya. It’s part of the Masafer Yatta region featured in “No Other Land”, which depicts the Palestinian residents’ attempts to fend off settler attacks and the military’s plans to demolish their homes.
At around sunset, as residents were ending their daylong Ramzan fast, roughly two dozen Jewish settlers along with police entered the village, throwing stones at houses and breaking property, witnesses said.
Around 30 soldiers arrived soon after. Jewish Israelis in an activist group supporting the villagers showed video of themselves also being attacked, with settlers hitting their car with sticks and stones.
Ballal said he filmed some of the damage caused by the settlers. Then he went home and locked it, with his wife and three young children inside.
“I told myself if they attack me, if they kill me, I will protect my family,” he said.
Ballal said Luski approached with two soldiers, hit him on the head, knocked him to the ground and kept kicking and punching him in the head. At the same time, one soldier hit him on the legs with his gun butt, while the other pointed his weapon at him, he said.
Lamia Ballal, the director’s wife, said she was huddling inside with their children and heard him screaming, “I’m dying!”
Luski told the AP that he and other settlers had come to the village to help a fellow settler who said he was being attacked by Palestinian stone-throwers. He claimed dozens of masked Palestinians attacked his car with stones, including Ballal.
“He broke my window, threw a stone at my chest,” he alleged.
He said when soldiers arrived, he led them to Ballal’s house to identify him as one of the attackers, but denied that he hit him or that settlers attacked any property in the village. Luski said he had footage of the night’s events, but when asked to show it to the AP, he responded with a string of expletives.
Film looked at Palestinians’ struggle to stay on the land
“No Other Land,” which won the Oscar this year for best documentary, chronicles the struggle by residents of the Masafer Yatta area to stop the Israeli military from demolishing their villages.
The joint Israeli-Palestinian production has won a string of international awards, starting at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2024. It has also drawn ire in Israel and abroad, as when Miami Beach proposed ending the lease of a movie theater that screened it.
Basel Adra, another of the film’s co-directors who is a prominent Palestinian activist in the area, said there’s been a massive upswing in attacks by settlers and Israeli forces since the Oscar win.
“Nobody can do anything to stop the pogroms, and soldiers are only there to facilitate and help the attacks,” he said. “We’re living in dark days here, in Gaza, and all of the West Bank … Nobody’s stopping this.”
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