Oscar-winning Palestinian director is attacked by Israeli settlers and detained, activists say

By Canadian Press on March 24, 2025.

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli settlers beat up one of the Palestinian co-directors of the Oscar-winning film “ No Other Land ” in the occupied West Bank on Monday, and he was then detained by the Israeli military, Jewish activists on the scene said.

Dozens of settlers attacked the Palestinian village of Susiya in the Masafer Yatta area, destroying property, said the activist group Center for Jewish Nonviolence.

They attacked Hamdan Ballal, one of the documentary’s co-directors, leaving his head bleeding, the activists said. As he was being treated in an ambulance, soldiers detained him and a second Palestinian man, the group said.

The Israeli military said it was looking into the episode but did not immediately comment.

“We don’t know where Hamdan is because he was taken away in a blindfold,” said 28-year-old Josh Kimelman, who was at the scene.

A group of 10-20 masked settlers attacked him and other Jewish activists with stones and sticks, and smashed their car windows and slashed their tires.

Video provided by the Center for Jewish Nonviolence showed a masked settler shoving and swinging his fists at two activists from the group in a dusty field at night. The activists rush back to their car. “Get in, get in!” one shouts, and they duck inside as the thuds of rocks being thrown can be heard. “Car window was broken,” the driver says as they drive off.

“No Other Land,” which won the Oscar this year for best documentary, chronicles the struggle by residents of Masafer Yatta to stop the Israeli military from demolishing their villages. It has two Palestinian co-directors, Ballal and Basel Adra, both residents of Masafar Yatta, and two Israeli directors, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor.

The joint Palestinian-Israeli 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 briefly proposed ending the lease of a movie theater that screened the documentary.

The Associated Press