This year’s Best Doc Oscar-winner attacked by settlers, arrested & released.
Nicol Wistreich
The Palestinian co-director of the 2025 Academy Award winner for best picture, Hamdan Ballal has been attacked, arrested and is – at time of writing – out of contact. Yuval Abraham, the Israeli co-director of the Oscar-winning said Ballal was attacked and wounded by settlers. Witnesses say Israeli soldiers removed him from an ambulance while he was receiving treatment.
Abraham posted on social media:
“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. Soldiers invaded the ambulance he called, and took him. No sign of him since.”
According to Israeli newspaper Haaretz, “the attack began around 6 P.M. near a school in the village of Susya, where Ballal is from. A settler approached Palestinian homes, and when residents asked him to leave, dozens of settlers arrived and attacked them with stones and blows with their fists.
“The settlers destroyed water tanks, stole security cameras, and smashed car windows. When soldiers arrived, the settlers fled. American activists at the scene called the police, but said officers did not intervene.”
“The 2024 film No Other Land documents life in the West Bank’s Masafer Yatta region under abuse by Israeli authorities and settlers. The documentary is the directorial debut of Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, and Rachel Szor, an Israeli-Palestinian collective of four activists.
“Last March, when the film was screened in Masafer Yatta in the south Hebron hills, Ballal wrote in a column for +972 Magazine about living with settler violence. “For years, Basel and I have filmed Israeli home demolitions and settler violence in Masafer Yatta. It can be draining, filming these horrible incidents every day,” he wrote.”
Update (25 March 25, 9am GMT):
The IDF has denied this account, according to Haaretz:
‘The IDF later said that after “several terrorists hurled rocks at Israeli citizens, damaging their vehicles” on Monday evening, security forces had arrived to disperse a violent confrontation that involved “mutual rock-hurling. The detainees were taken for further questioning by the Israel Police,” the IDF said. “Contrary to claims, no Palestinian was apprehended from inside an ambulance.”‘
Hamdan Ballal is still missing.
Update (25 March 25, 4pm GMT):
Hamdan Ballal has been released:
“Hamdan Ballal and two other Palestinians left a police station in the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba, where they were being held on Tuesday. Ballal had bruises on his face and blood on his clothes.
The three had spent the night on the floor of a military base while suffering from serious injuries sustained in the attack, according to Ballal’s lawyer, Lea Tsemel.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/25/oscar-winning-palestinian-director-hamdan-ballal-released-from-israeli-detention
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