An eyewitness to the arrest of Palestinian filmmaker Hamdan Ballal has detailed the moment she saw the Oscar winner zip-tied and blindfolded by police.
Raviv Rose spoke to The Hollywood Reporter from the West Bank, where Ballal, a co-director of the Academy Award-winning documentary No Other Land, as well as two other men, Khaled Mohammad Shanran and Nasser Shreteh, were attacked and arrested Monday night according to Israeli director Yuval Abraham. Abraham said Ballal “has injuries to his head and stomach, bleeding” after being assaulted by a group of settlers in his home village of Susiya.
On Tuesday, Abraham posted an update to say that Ballal had been released.
Rose, a Jewish American living in the region, tells THR she witnessed the aftermath of the attack. The 24-year-old is with an organization called the Center for Jewish Nonviolence and describes their work as “protective presence work,” a form of solidarity activism. “Our role is to bear witness to the day-to-day human rights violations and violence that these communities are experiencing, to document and share their stories,” Rose explains. “We support by connecting people to lawyers and legal cases, doing fundraising and addressing basic needs.”
Upon hearing word of the incident in Susiya, Rose and a group of fellow activists drove to the village where they, too, were attacked, says the activist. “As we ran, settlers started beating us with sticks and clubs in the back… We were trying to draw the attention of the [Israeli] army to what was happening and they just completely refused to do anything. We ran into the vehicle, and that is when they started stoning the car as well. They stoned the car to the point of destruction.”
Rose adds that the police treated the group “like criminals.” “They demanded to see our passports, the registration of the vehicle,” she says. The activists were told that if they wanted to file a complaint, to head to the police station in the morning.
The group then went to Ballal’s house. “As we approached, his family was praying, because the attack had been [during Ramadan fasting break] Iftar. Customarily, you sit down and you eat, and then when you finish your meal, you pray. So I’m not even sure if they had eaten, but they were praying in the house,” Rose recalls. “A number of other relatives were outside. We learned that he had been attacked. There was a pool of his blood outside of his front door… We could see the three Palestinians — Hamdan Ballal, Khaled Mohammad Shanran and Nasser Shreteh — they were zip-tied and blindfolded and they were being put into an army vehicle.”
She says: “We talked to some relatives and pieced together the story that settlers had approached the houses and started throwing stones to destroy private property, a water tank and a car, maybe a couple cars. Hamdan sent his family inside to keep them safe, and then he tried to tell the settlers to leave. And that’s when they attacked him.” Photos and video footage of the incidents, as Rose described them, have been seen by THR. Ballal’s lawyer has been approached for comment.
But this is a “much of a muchness” in the Masafer Yatta area says Rose, and is only drawing outcry because of Ballal’s recent Oscar win. “This story is getting so much buzz because now Hamdan has an Oscar, but in a very real way, in Masafer Yatta, there have been four attacks on a similar scale since the Oscars alone. Every time we document, we try and get out the word out and file our police complaints but we understand that nothing comes of this.”
The IDF offered a different version of events in its own statement on Monday, saying the violence started after “several terrorists hurled rocks at Israeli citizens, damaging their vehicles.” Both sides began throwing rocks at one another, and as IDF and Israeli police arrived at the conflict, “several terrorists began hurling rocks at the security forces.” Both parties agreed that three Palestinians were detained.
No Other Land, directed by four filmmakers — two Israeli, two Palestinian — took home the prize for best documentary at the 97th annual Academy Awards on March 2. The film documents the forced displacement of Palestinians in Masafer Yatta, as well as a budding friendship between a Palestinian activist and Israeli journalist, between 2019 and 2023. Despite its Oscar win, No Other Land has yet to find a distributor in the U.S.
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