Oscar-winning Palestinian director attacked by Israeli settlers and detained and beaten by soldiers
Hamdan Ballal won an Academy Award for ‘No Other Land’, a film documentary depicting his village’s struggle against Israel’s occupation
Hamdan Ballal, the Oscar-winning Palestinian co-director of “No Other Land” is released from a police station in the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba a day after being detained by the Israeli army following an attack by Israeli settlers. Photo: APOnly a few weeks ago, Hamdan Ballal stood on a stage in Los Angeles and accepted an Oscar for the documentary film depicting his West Bank village’s struggle against Israeli occupation.
But on Tuesday, Ballal – his face bruised and clothes still spotted with blood – recounted to the Associated Press how he was heavily beaten by an Israeli settler and soldiers the night before.
The settler, he said, kicked his head “like a football” during a settler attack on his village. The soldiers then detained him and two other Palestinians.
Ballal said he was kept blindfolded for more than 20 hours, sitting on the floor under a blasting air conditioner. The soldiers kicked, punched or hit him with a stick whenever they came on their guard shifts, he said.
Ballal does not speak Hebrew, but he said he heard them saying his name and the word “Oscar”.
“I realised they were attacking me specifically,” he said in an interview at a West Bank hospital after his release Tuesday. “When they say ‘Oscar’, you understand. When they say your name, you understand.”
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to the claims that soldiers beat Ballal. The settler whom Ballal identified as his attacker, Shem Tov Luski – who has threatened Ballal in the past – denied he or the soldiers beat him and told the AP that he and other Palestinians in the village had thrown stones at his car. He said he did not know Ballal was an Oscar winner.
The Israeli military said Monday it had detained three Palestinians suspected of hurling rocks as well as one Israeli civilian, who was soon released. Ballal denied throwing stones.
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“I’m dying!”
The attack took place Monday night in the southern West Bank village of Susiya. It’s part of the Masafer Yatta region featured in No Other Land, which depicts the Palestinian residents’ attempts to fend off settler attacks and the military’s plans to demolish their homes.
At around sunset, as residents were ending their day-long Ramadan fast, roughly two dozen Jewish settlers, along with police, entered the village, throwing stones at houses and breaking property, witnesses say.
Around 30 soldiers arrived soon after.
Jewish Israelis from an activist group supporting the villagers showed a video of themselves also being attacked, with settlers hitting their car with sticks and stones.
Ballal said he filmed some of the damage caused by the settlers. Then he went to his own home and locked it, with his wife and three young children inside.
“I told myself if they will attack me, if they kill me, I will protect my family,” he said.
Ballal said Luski approached with two soldiers. He said Luski hit him on the head, knocked him to the ground and kept kicking and punching him in the head. At the same time, one soldier hit him on the legs with his gun butt while the other pointed his weapon at him, he said.
Lamia Ballal, the director’s wife, said she was huddling inside with their children and heard him screaming, “I’m dying!”
Luski told the AP that he and other settlers had come to the village to help a fellow settler who said Palestinian stone-throwers were attacking him. He said dozens of masked Palestinians attacked his car with stones, including Ballal. “He broke my window and threw a stone at my chest,” he said.
Luski said when soldiers arrived, he led them to Ballal’s house to identify him as one of the attackers. He denied that he hit him or that settlers attacked any property in the village. Luski said he had footage of the night’s events, but when asked to show it to the AP, he responded with a string of expletives.
On Tuesday, a small bloodstain could be seen outside Ballal’s home, and the family car’s windows were shattered. Neighbours pointed to a nearby water tank with a hole in the side that they said had been punched by the settlers.
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Detention
Lea Tsemel, the lawyer representing Ballal and the two other Palestinians detained with him, said they were taken to an army base, where they only received minimal care for their injuries from the attack. She said they had no access to them for several hours after their arrest.
Ballal said he had no idea where he was being held, could see nothing and was “freezing” from the hours spent blindfolded under the air conditioner.
The three were transferred to an Israeli police station at the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba and were released Tuesday afternoon.
“All my body is pain,” he told the AP immediately after his release as he walked, limping, toward a hospital in the nearby Palestinian city of Hebron.
Doctors at the hospital said Ballal had bruises and scratches all over his body, abrasions under his eye and a cut on his chin but no internal injuries. The two other detained Palestinians also had minor injuries.
In a widely circulated video from August, Luski and several other masked settlers are seen arguing with Ballal. Luski shouts profanity at him and tries to provoke him into a fight.
“This is my land; I was given it by God,” Luski says. “Next time, it won’t be nice.”