Hamdan Ballal, co-director of the Oscar-winning documentary “No Other Land,” has been taken by Israeli military forces in Masafer Yatta, South of Hebron in the occupied West Bank.
According to Jewish American activists on the scene with an organization called the Center for Jewish Nonviolence, they and Ballal were surrounded by a group of roughly 15 masked Israeli settlers near Ballal’s home, who attacked them with sticks and stones. Ballal was left bleeding from the head and sought medical attention in an ambulance. Israeli military forces then stormed the ambulance and took Ballal, whose whereabouts remain unknown as of this writing. Israeli authorities have yet to comment on the matter.
Video posted by one of the activists, Anna Lippman, shows them being attacked by a masked settler, who takes a swing at one of them before they retreat to their car. Once inside, loud banging sounds can be heard as the car is pelted with large stones. Glass shards then scatter across the inside of the car as a window is broken, and the camera reveals that the windshield is shattered as the car gets moving.
Breaking: settlers attack Palestinians and international activists in Masafer Yatta pic.twitter.com/Q9FMHjzI6w
— Anna🍉🗝️ (@anna_lippman) March 24, 2025
Just three weeks ago, Ballal was in Los Angeles accepting an Oscar for “No Other Land,” which won for best documentary feature. The film documents the displacement of rural Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank over four years, as their villages are cleared out by the Israeli military for a tank training ground. One of the co-directors of the film, Yuval Abraham, used his Oscar speech to call for a political path to equal political rights for Palestinians and Israelis, and accused the United States of “helping to block this path.”
Despite the film’s critical and financial success globally, it went without an official distributor in the U.S. In Miami, the mayor of the city tried to terminate the lease and funding for a theater that was screening the film, before backing down from the move weeks later.
Another co-director of the film, journalist Basel Adra, describes Ballal’s abduction as indicative of an overall push to wipe his community off the map. “I’m standing with Karam, Hamdan’s 7 year old son, near the blood of Hamdan’s in his house, after settlers lynched him,” he posted on X. “This is how they erase Masafer Yatta.”
