Only weeks after strutting down the red carpet at the Oscars, Palestinian filmmaker Hamdan Ballal was on a blood-soaked floor in the occupied West Bank — not from the pages of movie script, but from the harsh reality he’s worked years to chronicle.
Ballal, a co-director of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land about the systematic displacement of Palestinians in Masafer Yatta, was violently attacked on Monday by masked Israeli settlers before being blindfolded and arrested by Israeli troops. Eyewitnesses recount a violent, orchestrated attack on the Susya village, with scores of settlers vandalizing houses, slashing car tires, and throwing rocks — a stark reprise of the very images depicted in Ballal’s film.
As per American Jewish peace activists from the Center for Jewish Nonviolence, who witnessed the attack, Ballal was wounded in the head and arrested while he was being treated in an ambulance. No charges were made public, and the Israeli military did not comment immediately.
The arrest is indicative of a disturbing trend. In recent months, directors of No Other Land — a unusual Palestinian-Israeli film collaboration — have received repeated threats and physical violence. Basel Adra, also a co-director, was recently similarly attacked by settlers in February. Both directors are longstanding residents of the besieged Masafer Yatta area, where their cameras have documented the relentless destruction of Palestinian villages under Israel’s aggressive expansion policies.
What is so chilling about this event is the contrast: a movie hailed by the international film community for its honesty, now greeted with violence by those it had the courage to criticize. Israeli authorities, including the culture minister, have denounced the Oscar victory as “a sad day for cinema,” and some municipalities, like Miami Beach, have even tried to ban screenings.
But censorship takes many shapes — and sometimes it materializes in fists and handcuffs.
Ballal’s tale is more than a newspaper headline; it is an emblem of a stilled voice clamoring to be heard. His arrest is not merely a crackdown on an individual, but a bid to silence a message that has already reached the international arena.
In a world where truth too often is attacked — at times, literally — the images, the voices, and the bravery of No Other Land will not be silenced. For even when the cameras are turned off, the world is always observing.
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