It’s horrifying to admit, but the barbaric and homicidal treatment of Palestinians by Israel has been a fixture of the news for long it’s almost background noise. Sure, you feel sad when you read about the IDF bombing a hospital, children being executed in the street by Israeli snipers, or the ongoing war crime of preventing aid reaching starving people, but you can only feel so much despair.
But, sometimes, a story cuts through all that. Last night the shocking news emerged that Oscar-winning filmmaker Hamden Ballal, whose film No Other Land won the Best Documentary Feature Film earlier this month, had been attacked by Israeli settlers and has now disappeared.
The story emerged via No Other Land‘s co-director Yuval Abraham, who posted the following disturbing message:
A group of settlers just lynched Hamdan Ballal, co director of our film no other land. They beat him and he has injuries in his head and stomach, bleeding. Soldiers invaded the ambulance he called, and took him. No sign of him since.
— Yuval Abraham יובל אברהם (@yuval_abraham) March 24, 2025
No Other Land is about settlers illegally stealing homes and land from Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, with one of the film’s other directors Basel Adra believing the attack is retaliation for the Oscar win: “Palestinians in the village have been under physical attack by settlers almost daily. The settlers’ violence is increasing here. Maybe it’s a revenge for the movie and the Oscar.”
The ambulance that collected Ballal was stopped and invaded by IDF soldiers and he was apparently transported to a police station, where he was tortured:
After the assault, Hamdan was handcuffed and blindfolded all night in an army base while two soldiers beat him up on the floor, his lawyer Leah Tsemel said after speaking with him just now. He's still held in the Kiryat Arba police station.
— Yuval Abraham יובל אברהם (@yuval_abraham) March 25, 2025
The moment Hamdan Ballal was attacked by Israeli goons in the occupied West Bank. After this the #IOF abducted him. His whereabouts are still unknown. pic.twitter.com/sFUUOpaZHJ
— Lance Aksamit (@AksamitLance) March 25, 2025
Despite everything, you might feel optimistic that the entertainment industry would step up and demand action, or at least answers! After all, just weeks ago Ballal was awarded the highest honor in documentary filmmaking by a jury of industry titans. But, so far, there’s been surprisingly little support for him – save for one man with a proud history of sticking his head about the parapet.
MCU legend Mark Ruffalo, Bruce Banner himself, took to Instagram to say that “this is an attack on our beloved art from [sic] of film making” and that “every film maker and academy member should be acting together in protest”:
Mark Ruffalo's comment on Hamdan Ballal getting attacked and abducted. pic.twitter.com/ZtZAWWV3P0
— Mohaned (@mohaned_mmfilm) March 25, 2025
Sigh, sometimes we wish he actually was the Hulk… Perhaps it’s unfair that this single incident, which is ultimately a drop of water in the vast ocean of fanatical genocide inflicted upon the Palestinian people, should rouse such feelings. Hamden Ballal is after all one man, and since Israel broke the ceasefire they’ve killed 400 men, women, and children with their indiscriminate bombing of Gaza.
However, something is particularly stomach-churning about a man beginning the month making an Oscars acceptance speech and ending it being brutally attacked and tortured as the world looks away. We can only pray that Ballal is still alive and that he’s freed soon.
Published: Mar 25, 2025 06:31 am