HEBRON, West Bank — Only a few weeks ago, Hamdan Ballal stood on a stage in Los Angeles accepting an Oscar for the film “No Other Land,” a documentary depicting his West Bank village’s struggle against Israel’s occupation.
On Tuesday, Ballal – his face bruised and clothes still spotted with blood – recounted to The Associated Press how he was heavily beaten by an Israeli settler and soldiers the night before. The settler, he said, kicked his head “like a football” during a settler attack on his village.
The soldiers then detained him and two other Palestinians. Ballal said he was kept blindfolded for more than 20 hours, sitting on the floor under a blasting air conditioner. The soldiers kicked, punched or hit him with a stick whenever they came on their guard shifts, he said. Ballal doesn’t speak Hebrew, but he said he heard them saying his name and the word “Oscar.”
“I realized they were attacking me specifically,” he said in an interview at a West Bank hospital after his release Tuesday. “When they say ‘Oscar’, you understand. When they say your name, you understand.”
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to the claims that Ballal was beaten by soldiers. The settler whom Ballal identified as his attacker, Shem Tov Luski — who has threatened Ballal in the past — denied he or the soldiers beat him and told the AP that he and other Palestinians in the village had thrown stones at his car. He said he didn’t know Ballal was an Oscar winner.
The Israeli military said Monday it had detained three Palestinians suspected of hurling rocks as well as one Israeli civilian, who was soon released. Ballal denied throwing stones.
The attack took place Monday night in the southern West Bank village of Susiya. It’s part of the Masafer Yatta region featured in “No Other Land,” which depicts the Palestinian residents’ attempts to fend off settler attacks and the military’s plans to demolish their homes.
At around sunset, as residents were ending their daylong Ramadan fast, roughly two dozen Jewish settlers along with police entered the village, throwing stones at houses and breaking property, witnesses say. Around 30 soldiers arrived soon after. Jewish Israelis in an activist group supporting the villagers showed video of themselves also being attacked, with settlers hitting their car with sticks and stones.
