No Other Land co-director Hamdan Ballal has said that his family was attacked by the same man who attacked him shortly after he won the best documentary Oscar nearly one year ago, leaving his brother hospitalized and four family members arrested.
In a statement shared on social media by his fellow No Other Land directors Yuval Abraham and Basel Adra, Ballal says his family was attacked by “the settler who attacked me in my home shortly after I won the Oscar last year.” Ballal says his brother called the police but the army arrived first and “immediately raided our house, attacking everyone inside.” The army, Ballal added, arrested two of his brothers, a nephew and cousin.
Another brother, Ballal says, “was badly injured and is now in the hospital.”
Ballal indicated he’s faced multiple attacks in the year since he won the Oscar, writing “the situation has gotten worse … as it has across the West Bank.”
Two weeks ago, he claims, an Israeli court ruled that the area around his home would be closed to non-residents, “but the settlers break that order and still come with their flocks almost every day. We call the police, they do nothing. The army comes, they do nothing.”
He adds, “The Israeli court decision was supposed to make things a bit quieter for us. But the opposite has been true. The settlers have ramped up their harassment and the Israeli authorities have done nothing to enforce the decision, and today they joined the settlers in the attack.”
Shortly after No Other Land won the best documentary Oscar on March 2 of last year, Ballal, back in his home village of Susiya in the West Bank, was attacked by a group of settlers, leaving him with “injuries to his head and stomach, bleeding.” Ballal was also zip-tied and blindfolded by police before being released the next day.
In a New York Times op-ed written a month after the attack, Ballal wrote in part, “Our movie won an Oscar, but our lives are no better than before.”
He explained, as did an eyewitness living in the region who reported on Ballal’s arrest for The Hollywood Reporter, that attacks were occurring frequently in the Masafer Yatta region in the West Bank.
But he urged people not to “turn away” from the violence in Susiya and beyond.
“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,” Ballal wrote in the Times. “Don’t turn away now.”
Raviv Rose, a Jewish American living in the region and working with the Center for Jewish Nonviolence, told THR shortly after Ballal was attacked last year that “in Masafer Yatta, there have been four attacks on a similar scale since the Oscars alone [just weeks earlier]. 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.”
No Other Land documents “the gradual erasure of Masafer Yatta as soldiers destroy the homes of families,” according to a synposis, as well as the bond between Palestinian activist Adra and Israeli journalist Abraham between 2019 and 2023. The film, which was without a U.S. distributor at the time of its Oscar win, was ultimately self-released.
The film’s website also highlights the ongoing violence with a message reading in part, “Masafer Yatta is still being erased and the daily violence continues.”
In addition to documenting the attacks against Ballal, the site also mentions the July 28 death, after allegedly being shot by an Israeli settler, of Palestinian activist Awdah Hathaleen, who was featured in the film.