During an attack on Oscar-winning Palestinian director Hamdan Ballal on Monday, Israeli settlers were aided by two Israel Defense Forces soldiers who beat him with the butt of their rifles outside his home and threatened to kill him, the film-maker has said.
In an interview with the Guardian, Ballal, one of the four directors of the film No Other Land, which documented the destruction of villages in the West Bank and won best documentary at this year’s Academy Awards, recounted how two Israeli soldiers first encircled him while a settler was assaulting him, before violently striking him on the head and threatening to shoot him.
“It all started around 6pm on Monday,” said Ballal, who was released on Tuesday after being detained by Israeli forces in a police station in the West Bank. “We had finished our daily Ramadan fast in Susya in the Masafer Yatta area, south of Hebron, when someone called me to say that settlers had entered our village.”
Some of the settlers were armed with batons, others had knives and one of them was holding an M16 rifle, witnesses told the Guardian. Among them were a group of Israeli soldiers who escorted the settlers inside the village, where Ballal lives.
“Because I work for a human rights organisation called Haqel: In Defense of Human Rights, and because I’m also a photographer, I went there to document what was happening,” he said. “I took three or four photos, and then I realised that the situation was deteriorating. There were dozens of settlers, and they were becoming increasingly aggressive.”
Masked settlers with sticks started attacking Palestinian residents, including a group of Jewish activists, smashing their car windows and slashing tyres, according to Josh Kimelman, an activist with the Center for Jewish Nonviolence. Video provided by the group showed a masked settler shoving and swinging his fists at two activists in a dusty field at night.
“In that precise moment, I thought about my family, who were at home,” Balla said. ‘‘I ran to them and told my wife, ‘Lock the house and keep the children inside.’ They could have attacked me, but by doing so they wouldn’t have harmed my family.’’
One settler, escorted by two Israeli soldiers, walked straight over to Ballal’s house. Soldiers started shooting in the air to prevent anyone from supporting Ballal, who was shouting for help.
“The soldiers pointed their rifles at me while the settler from behind began beating me,” Ballal said. “They threw me to the ground, and the settler started hitting me on the head. Then a soldier also began beating me; with the butt of his rifle, he struck me on the head. After that, he fired his weapon in the air. I don’t understand Hebrew, but I gathered that he said the next rifle shot would hit me. In that moment, I thought I was going to die.”
Injured, handcuffed and blindfolded, Ballal and two other Palestinians were moved by the soldiers to a military vehicle and then to a police station in the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba, where they spent the night on the floor and were forced to sleep under a freezing air conditioner.
Ballal’s lawyer, Lea Tsemel, said they received only minimal care for their injuries from the attack and said she had no access to them for several hours after their arrest.
The Guardian has contacted the IDF for comment.
“It was a revenge for our movie,” Ballal said. “I heard the voices of the soldiers, they were laughing about me … I heard [the word] ‘Oscar.’”
Earlier this month, Ballal and the other directors of No Other Land, which looks at the struggles of living under Israeli occupation, appeared on stage at the 97th Academy Awards in Los Angeles to accept the Oscar for best documentary film.
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. Miami Beach in Florida proposed ending the lease of a theatre that screened it. Israel’s culture minister has called the Oscar win “a sad moment for the world of cinema”.
“We won the Oscar just three weeks ago, and the violence has escalated,” Ballal said. “Not only against me, not only against the activists and other crew members of the film, but against all the residents.”
The Israeli military designated Masafer Yatta in the southern West Bank as a live-fire training zone in the 1980s and ordered residents, mostly Arab Bedouin, to be expelled. About 1,000 people have largely remained in place, but soldiers regularly move in to demolish homes, tents, water tanks and olive orchards, and Palestinians fear outright expulsion could come at any time.
During the war in Gaza, Israel has killed hundreds of Palestinians in the West Bank during widescale military operations, and there has also been a rise in settler attacks on Palestinians.
CJNV shared details of at least 43 attacks in the village of Susya since the beginning of the year, perpetrated by violent settlers.
“They won’t stop here,” Ballal said. “The settlers will continue to attack us. I’m more scared now than before.”
“After what they did to me,” he added, “I fear it could now happen to others.”