One of the makers of an Oscar-winning documentary about Palestinian communities in the West Bank was assaulted in the occupied territory on Monday, with his whereabouts unknown after he was detained by the Israeli military, his co-director said.
Hamdan Ballal, director of “No Other Land,” a joint Palestinian-Israeli production that won an Academy Award this year, was attacked by a group of Israeli settlers, Yuval Abraham wrote on X.
“They beat him in the head and all over his body,” Abraham related. “While wounded and bleeding, soldiers entered the ambulance he had called and arrested him.”
Ballal “has since disappeared and it is unclear whether he is receiving medical treatment or what is happening to him,” Abraham added.
A spokesperson for the Israeli military told AP it was looking into the incident but did not comment. The IDF did not immediately respond to POLITICO’s request for comment.
The incident occurred as dozens of Israeli settlers stormed the Palestinian village of Susiya in the southern West Bank, an area that features in Ballal’s documentary, activist group Center for Jewish Nonviolence told the Associated Press. The group added that soldiers blindfolded Ballal and took him away.
Abraham posted a video to X showing several masked assailants, some carrying sticks, running and throwing rocks under the cover of darkness. Another video shared by Abraham shows a man in a mask shoving and throwing punches at activists.
Former Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, a longtime critic of Israel’s military operations in Gaza, expressed “dismay” at the reports that Ballal had been “lynched” and called for “maximum diplomatic and economic sanctions” on Israel in a post on X.
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