Rabat– Only a few weeks after receiving an Oscar for co-directing, Best Documentary Feature Film, “No Other Land”, Hamdan Ballal was falsely detained after he was severely beaten by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank village of Susiya, on March 24.
“A group of settlers just lynched Hamdan Ballal, co-director of our film No Other Land. They beat him and he has injuries in his head and stomach, bleeding,” said his fellow co-director, Yuval Abraham, on X.
Ballal’s wife, Lamia, heard her husband’s cries for help as he was beaten outside their home. She says she witnessed soldiers hitting him with the butts of their rifles and saw a civilian filming the violence. According to Al Jazeera reports, Lamia expressed that they have been more fearful after the Oscar win, which she believes led to increased attacks on their family.
Ballal then disappeared after Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) stormed the ambulance he called and, expectedly, detained the Oscar winner, along with two other Palestinians, instead of the Israeli settlers who lynched him.
The settlers also caused visible damage to Ballal’s family home, with shattered windows and a hole punched into a nearby water tank.
Five American activists from the Center of Jewish Nonviolence corroborated that Hamdan was attacked by a group of 15 armed settlers who also caused the destruction to Ballal’s house and car.
‘‘The settlers destroyed his car with stones and slashed one of the tires […] All the windows and windshields were broken,’’ said one of the witnesses to the Guardian.
The IOF baselessly claimed that the detentions were related to a violent confrontation, where three Palestinians were suspected of throwing stones at forces and an Israeli civilian was involved.
One day after the arrest, Ballal and the two other Palestinians left the police station in the Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba, with video footage of Ballal walking with difficulty and with visible bruises on his face, and blood covering his clothes.
He later shared details of his detention, describing how he was held at an army base, blindfolded for 24 hours, and forced to sleep under a freezing air conditioner. Ballal said he could hear soldiers laughing at his predicament while he was in the dark room.
“All the night I was freezing. It was a room, I couldn’t see anything…I heard the voice of soldiers laughing about me,” said Ballal
Lea Tsemel, an attorney representing the three detained men, had noted that they had received minimal medical care for their injuries and that she had no access to them for hours after their arrest.
Ballal identified one of his attackers as a well-known settler who had previously threatened him in a video filmed last August. In that video, the settler can be seen harassing Ballal, claiming ownership of the land and warning him of future violence; however, it is unlikely that any justice would reach him or the other violent settler under the Israeli apartheid regime.
For many this shed light on the scope of Israeli violence that touches every palestinian regardless of their international esteem and awards. This brought back criticism that the Oscar winning film, made by a Palestinian-Israeli collective, fails to address the reality of occupation that renders equating the Palestinian and Israeli experience impossible.
The Oscar-winning documentary depicts the destruction and ethnic cleansing in the Occupied West Bank, namely in Masafer Yatta, a collection of 19 Palestinian hamlets south of the city of Hebron (Al Khalil). The film consists mostly of camera footage and a narrative produced by Basel Adra as he resists the demolition of his disappearing hometown, which Israel intends turning into a military training zone.
