Clashes erupted last night near the village of Susya, in the southern West Bank: dozens of settlers threw stones at cars, houses and residents who responded. Hamdan Ballal, the Oscar-winning Palestinian director for the documentary “No other land” , was injured in the clashes and was later arrested by IDF men.
Israeli co-director Yuval Avraham wrote in X that Ballal was attacked. “ A group of settlers attacked the house of Hamdan, who directed the film with me. They beat him on the head and all over his body. While he was wounded and bleeding, soldiers entered the ambulance he had called and arrested him. There has been no news of him since and it is unclear whether he is receiving medical care and what is happening to him.”
Avraham posted a video showing a masked settler allegedly attacking the village of Ballal. “They continued to attack the American activists as well, smashing their car with stones,” the Israeli filmmaker added. According to an eyewitness, four Palestinians were injured by the stone-throwing, most of them minor. Police said three Palestinians were arrested, including an Israeli minor who was later released due to injuries he sustained after being hit by a stone.
On March 3, "No Other Land," which chronicles the IDF's demolitions of the Palestinian village of Masafer Yatta in the West Bank, won the Oscar for best documentary. The film features two Palestinian filmmakers, Ballal and Basel Adra, both residents of Masafar Yatta, and two Israeli filmmakers, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor. On stage in Los Angeles, two of the film's four directors, an Israeli and a Palestinian, called for rights for Palestinians and a negotiated solution to the conflict. Avraham spoke about the destruction of Gaza and also about the Israeli hostages, brutally kidnapped on October 7. "There is a different path, a political solution, without ethnic supremacy, with national rights for both our peoples," he said.
Several days after Avraham's Oscar speech, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (Pacbi) released a statement condemning the documentary for violating the movement's "anti-normalization guidelines." The head of the Palestinian village council of Susya took a different view, thanking activists, including Israelis, for their support. The documentary, despite the Oscar, has yet to find a distributor in America.
(Online Union)