‘No Other Land’ co-director attacked by Israeli settlers aljazeera.com

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Hamdan Ballal, a Palestinian co-director of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, has been arrested by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank after he was beaten and injured by Israeli settlers, his fellow co-director Yuval Abraham said on X.

“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,” Abraham said in a post.

“Soldiers invaded the ambulance he called, and took him. No sign of him since,” he added.

A video provided by the Center for Jewish Nonviolence showed a masked settler shoving and swinging his fists at two activists from the group in a dusty field at night.

The activists rush back to their car. “Get in, get in!” one shouts, and they duck inside as the thuds of rocks can be heard hitting the car.

“Car window was broken,” the driver says as they drive off.

A group of 10 to 20 masked settlers also attacked Jewish activists at the scene with stones and sticks, smashed their car windows and slashed their tyres.

“We don’t know where Hamdan is because he was taken away in a blindfold,” Josh Kimelman, one of the activists who was at the scene, told The Associated Press news agency.

The Israeli military said it was looking into the episode but did not immediately comment.

No Other Land, a collaboration between Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers, follows activist Basel Adra as he risks arrest and violence to document the destruction of his hometown, Masafer Yatta, by the Israeli military.

The film has won a string of international awards, starting at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2024. It has also drawn ire in Israel and abroad, as when Miami Beach briefly proposed ending the lease of a movie theatre that screened the documentary.

News source- Al Jazeera