On March 2, I won an Academy Award for best documentary for a film I co-directed, “No Other Land.” It’s hard to put into words how that moment felt. It was one of the most incredible moments of my life.
Three weeks later, I was brutally attacked in my home and arrested. In an instant, it was as if the Oscars had never happened, as if the award didn’t mean anything.
I come from Susiya, a small village on the southern edge of the West Bank. We are but a few dozen families. Our main livelihood is shepherding. Our life is simple. Our homes are simple. The main thing that steals our time is the near-daily violence and harassment of the settlers and the Israeli Army enforcing the occupation. Los Angeles and the Oscars were of an entirely different world from the one I know: I was struck by the enormous buildings, the rushing cars, the wealth all around me. And suddenly there we were, me and my three other co-directors, on one of the world’s most important stages, accepting the award.
Our stories, our communities and our voices were in the spotlight. Our struggle and our suffering were on display, and the world was watching — and supporting us. For years, we have been desperately trying to make our names and our struggle known. Now we had succeeded beyond anything any of us could have ever imagined.
When they called our names and the name of our movie flashed on the screen, I lost myself. I couldn’t feel my hands. I knew there were people all around me, but I couldn’t see them. I walked to the stage, following my feet, but my mind was completely blank.
We made our movie in order to bring attention to the situation where I live, to try to bring change to our communities, but when I was attacked, I realized that we were still trapped in the same grinding loop of violence and subjugation.
March 24 was a typical Ramadan evening. The sun was setting as my family sat down to break our fast. Then my neighbor called: Settlers were attacking. I ran to document the moment, but when I saw the crowd grow, I worried about my family and quickly returned home. Soon I saw a settler and two soldiers coming down the hill toward me. I shouted to my wife to keep our three young children — 7, 5 and 1½ years old — inside, with the door closed. I told her not to open the door, no matter what she heard.
I recognized the men coming toward us. They met me outside the door of my home and started beating and cursing me, mocking me as the “Oscar-winning filmmaker.” I felt guns bashing my ribs. Someone punched me in the head from behind. I fell to the ground. I was kicked and spat on. I felt immense pain and fear. I could hear my wife and kids screaming and crying, calling for me and telling the men to go away. It was the worst moment of my life. My wife and I both thought I would be killed. We feared what would happen to my family if I died.
It is difficult for me to write about this moment now. After I was beaten, I was handcuffed, blindfolded and thrown into an army jeep. For hours I lay blindfolded on the ground on what I later learned was an army base, fearing that I would be held for a long time and beaten again and again. I was released a day later.
The attack on me and my community was brutal. It received large amounts of press coverage, but it is not unique in any way. Just a few days later, dozens of settlers, many of them masked, attacked Jinba, a village nearby. Five people were hospitalized, and more than 20 were arrested. Later the army raided the village and ransacked homes, the mosque and the school. In Susiya alone, from the beginning of the year to the March 24 attack, local activists recorded more than 45 incidents with settlers or soldiers. Across our region, Masafer Yatta, that number is much higher.
I want you to know our land does not know only violence. There are dozens of small, pastoral Palestinian villages that make up this region. The landscape here is beautiful and wide. Year after year, we plant the land and graze our sheep in the fields. Our mornings start with a cup of tea drunk at sunrise while the flocks enjoy the dew that is still fresh on the grass. The day continues with tending the land, caring for the animals, milking the sheep and goats and preparing the food and goods from our labor. The whole family and the whole village are involved in this daily work together, helping and supporting one another.
But with this near-daily violence, we feel on the precipice of losing everything. When we are unable to shepherd and farm because of constantly encroaching settlements and ever more aggressive settlers and soldiers, we lose our income, our source of food, our traditions and our way of life. Fear is a constant, from morning to night. Our energies are consumed by keeping ourselves and our children safe.
In Masafer Yatta our lives are suffocated by aggression. We all fear that our village is the next to be dismantled, our people expelled.
On the day of the attack, alongside the fear, I felt something else I didn’t expect: heartbreak. My heart was broken from the disappointment. From the sense of failure. From the powerlessness. Three weeks earlier, on the Oscar stage, I had a taste of power and possibility. But even though our movie received global recognition, I felt I had failed — we had failed — in our attempt to make life better here. To convince the world something needed to change. My life is still at the mercy of the settlers and the occupation. My community is still suffering from unending violence. Our movie won an Oscar, but our lives are no better than before.
There is no law to turn to here and no government that will protect us, no international law and no international bodies that are pushing to stop this violence. And yet, in spite of all this and in spite of what I’ve been through and my community has experienced, there are still some bits of hope that remain from what I saw and felt at the Oscars and over the past year presenting our movie around the world.
The press attention that the attack in Susiya received because of our Oscar victory was unlike anything we experienced before. The messages and voices of support around the world have been overwhelming. I know that there are thousands and thousands of people who now know my name and my story, who know my community’s name and our story and who stand with us and support us. Don’t turn away now.
Hamdan Ballal is a filmmaker, writer and human rights activist. His film “No Other Land” won the 2024 Academy Award for best documentary feature.
Source photograph by Oren Ziv.
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