‘It was revenge for our movie’: Oscar winner says soldiers helped settlers attack him in West Bank
The Oscar-winning Palestinian film director Hamdan Ballal has said that Israeli settlers who attacked him were aided by two Israeli soldiers, who beat him with the butt of their rifles outside his home and threatened to kill him.
In an interview with the Guardian, Ballal, one of the four directors of the film No Other Land, which documents the destruction of villages in the West Bank and won best documentary at this year’s Academy Awards, recounted how on Monday two Israeli soldiers first encircled him while a settler was assaulting him, before violently striking him on the head and threatening to shoot him.
“It all started around 6pm on Monday,” said Ballal, who was released on Tuesday after Israeli forces detained him in a police station in the West Bank. “We had finished our daily Ramadan fast in Susya in the Masafer Yatta area, south of Hebron, when someone called me to say that settlers had entered our village.”
Some of the settlers were armed with batons, others had knives and one was holding an M16 rifle, witnesses told the Guardian. Among them were a group of Israeli soldiers who escorted the settlers inside the village where Ballal lives.
“Because I work for a human rights organisation called Haqel: in Defense of Human Rights, and because I’m also a photographer, I went there to document what was happening,” he said. “I took three or four photos, and then I realised that the situation was deteriorating. There were dozens of settlers, and they were becoming increasingly aggressive.”
Masked settlers with sticks started attacking Palestinian residents, including a group of Jewish activists, smashing their car windows and slashing tyres, according to Josh Kimelman, an activist with the Center for Jewish Nonviolence (CJNV). Video provided by the group showed a masked settler shoving and swinging his fists at two activists in a dusty field at night.
“In that precise moment, I thought about my family, who were at home,” Ballal said. ‘‘I ran to them and told my wife, ‘Lock the house and keep the children inside.’ They could have attacked me, but by doing so they wouldn’t have harmed my family.”
One settler, escorted by two Israeli soldiers, walked straight over to Ballal’s house. Soldiers started shooting in the air to prevent anyone from supporting Ballal, who was shouting for help.
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