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Hamdan Ballal, the Palestinian co-director of the documentary No Other Land that received Finest Documentary Characteristic on the Oscars, has been kidnapped by Israeli troopers, in response to his co-director Basel Adra and different eyewitnesses on the scene. He was reportedly crushed by Israeli settlers within the occupied West Financial institution earlier than being hauled away. Adra told CNN that he had rushed to Ballal’s residence within the village of Susya after he obtained a distressed telephone name from his colleague, solely to see Ballal and not less than one different particular person escorted from the premises, with some settlers throwing stones whereas Israeli police and army fired at bystanders to maintain them away. Right now, it’s at the moment unknown the place he’s positioned.
Concerning the incident, the Israeli army claimed to be responding to a “violent confrontation” between Israelis and Palestinians the place two sides had been throwing stones at one another after “terrorists hurled rocks at Israeli residents, damaging their autos.” Three Palestinians and an Israeli have been amongst these detained for questioning, in response to their report, whereas one Israeli citizen was additionally stated to be evacuated for medical remedy. Nonetheless, activists for the Middle for Jewish Nonviolence and different witnesses who spoke out of anonymity to keep away from reprisals disputed the claims to the Associated Press, describing how a gaggle of roughly 10-20 masked people used sticks, stones, and different weapons to beat Ballal and assault different activists on the scene, additionally slashing their tires and busting home windows in an try and scare others away. Josh Kimelman, one of many activists within the group attacked, additionally stated that Israeli police had stood by with out taking motion regardless of the activists explaining what was occurring.
“We got here again from the Oscars and day by day since there may be an assault on us,” Adra acknowledged to the AP after the incident. “This could be their revenge on us for making the film. It appears like a punishment.” Made by an Israeli-Palestinian collective, No Different Land straight addresses the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict by the lens of a Palestinian household going through displacement amid the Israeli authorities’s destruction of Masafer Yatta and the alliance that varieties between Adra and co-director and Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham to doc all of it. “A bunch of settlers simply lynched Hamdan Ballal, co-director of our movie ‘No Different Land,’” Abraham said in a post on X after the alleged assault. Monday. “They beat him and he has accidents in his head and abdomen, bleeding. Troopers invaded the ambulance he referred to as, and took him. No signal of him since.” Abraham was not a direct witness to the incident.
