One of the more frustrating industry news stories this week was the horrific treatment of recent Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Hamdan Ballal of “No Other Land” at the hands of violent Israeli settlers who attacked him and then was detained/beaten by the IDF (alongside Mohammad Shanran and Nasser Shreteh) in the West Bank.
Ballal’s co-director of “No Other Land” Yuval Abraham (an Israeli investigative journalist and filmmaker), on the compelling documentary focusing on the troubles in the West Bank and settler violence, has now highlighted that the Academy has “refused” to support the recent winner after the reports of his brutal abuse and detainment along with his high-profile Oscar win being brought up during his taunting and torture.
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“We were told that because other Palestinians were beaten up in the settler attack, it could be considered unrelated to the film, so they felt no need to respond,” Abraham said on social media in a scathing post that singled out the U.S. Academy for not supporting Ballal, while the European Academy did.
The group of winners made waves at the awards ceremony by using their Oscar speech to call for peace and understanding as Israeli-Palestinian relations keep getting increasingly hostile in Gaza and the West Bank. The Israeli military occupies both regions, and folks living in the West Bank have seen spikes of violence and detentions as settlers have been emboldened by politicians and the military handing out machine guns.
Thankfully, Ballal has been released. However, he looks visibly injured from recent footage (see below). How this even happened, to begin with, is a little insane and places a firm spotlight that even a “famous” Palestinian can still be treated like that, and humanity goes out the window.
Ballal is now telling his story to The Guardian, recounting the settler attack and beating, and believes that the IDF while beat him in detention because of the film as revenge.
“Because I work for a human rights organization called Haqel: in Defense of Human Rights, and because I’m also a photographer, I went there to document what was happening,” Ballal said. “I took three or four photos, and then I realized that the situation was deteriorating. There were dozens of settlers, and they were becoming increasingly aggressive.”
“It was a revenge for our movie,” Ballal said of his mistreatment and the connection to his Oscar-winning doc. “I heard the voices of the soldiers; they were laughing about me … I heard [the word] ‘Oscar.’”
Hollywood, including the Academy, has been all too “conflicted” with how to handle Israel’s ongoing aggression in Gaza (bombing residential areas and hospitals with American-made munitions and military actions leading to a reported 50,000+ dead, a majority of those being children), calls for more ceasefire deals, and hostage exchanges.
Honestly, we’re in quite a dark era of history when condemning violence, cultural erasure, the murder of children, war crimes, and genocidal behavior is seen as “controversial” or a red line for studios, producers, and a small handful of journalists (disparaging actresses Rachel Zegler and Melissa Barrera for speaking up).
Considering the Academy’s reaction to the whole Will Smith and Chris Rock slap event, you’d think they would be a little more sensitive to someone connected to the awards show being a victim of violence based on ethnicity and artistic expression.
