[News] Palestinian Oscar winner 'lynched' by Israeli settlers, colleague says

[Anti-Imperialist News]

middleeasteye.net
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/palestinian-oscar-winner-severely-beaten-israeli-settlers>
Palestinian Oscar winner 'lynched' by Israeli settlers, colleague says
By Yasmine El-Sabawi
March 25, 2025
------------------------------

Palestinian film director and Academy Award-winner Hamdan Ballal was
violently attacked by what his colleague described as a "lynch mob" of
Israeli <https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/israel> settlers on Monday
night in the Palestinian village of Susya, south of Hebron in the occupied
West Bank.

Susya is also the site of an Israeli settlement, which is illegal under
international law and something most American administrations have agreed
violates Article 49 of the Geneva Convention.

Ballal's whereabouts are now unknown after Israeli soldiers then seized him
from the ambulance that arrived to treat him, his co-director and fellow
Oscar winner of the documentary *No Other Land
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/discover/no-other-land-documentary-captures-palestinian-spirit-fails-depiction-israelis>*,
Yuval Abraham, said on X
<https://x.com/yuval_abraham/status/1904235552620339365?s=61>.

Abraham, a journalist for +972 magazine, said in a separate post
<https://x.com/yuval_abraham/status/1904250011929768348?s=61> featuring a
shaky cell phone video that masked settlers "attacked Hamdan’s village,
they continued to attack American activists, breaking their car with
stones".

The five Jewish-American activists at the scene "are participating in a
three-month long co-resistance project" in Masafer Yatta, the village at
the heart of *No Other Land*, the Center for Jewish Nonviolence said in a
statement released on Monday.

Masafer Yatta is a short drive southeast of Susiya.

The activists "responded to calls to come and support the village of Susiya
while it was under attack," and "when the activists returned to their car
to seek shelter, the settlers surrounded the car, slashed its tires, and
smashed the windows with stones", the statement read.

Basel Adra, the Palestinian resident of Masafer Yatta whose story is told
in the film, said on Monday
<https://x.com/basel_adra/status/1904257794678952400> that he was "standing
with Karam, Hamdan's 7 year old son, near the blood of Hamdan's in his
house, after settlers lynched him".

<https://www.middleeasteye.net/trending/no-other-land-oscar-outrage-israel>

'No Other Land': Palestinian-Israeli film’s Oscar win sparks outrage in
Israel


Ballal "is still missing after soldiers abducted him, injured and
bleeding", Adra said.

"This is how they erase Masafer Yatta."

Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians and their homes and farms are
commonplace. The attacks are often violent and can be deadly and can
include the torching of property and animals and the beatings of residents.

The United Nations humanitarian agency, OCHA, has documented at least 220
attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians in 2025 alone.

In a particularly gruesome case in 2015, an 18-month-old Palestinian boy
was burned to death when settlers torched a home in Duma, south of Nablus.

Former US President Joe Biden sanctioned a number of Israeli settlers for
carrying out such attacks, but President Donald Trump has since lifted
those sanctions.

"Local and international activists regularly document the actions of
settlers carrying out similar attacks, often calling the police for some
sort of recourse, but settlers are rarely, if ever, held accountable for
their crimes," the Center for Jewish Nonviolence said.
'Their hands were purple'

Eyewitnesses have often recounted how the Israeli military either stands by
as settlers carry out attacks or arrests the Palestinians and foreign
activists who are defending the property.

Middle East Eye recently spoke to 44-year-old activist Alex Chabbott, who
was deported back to the US this month and banned from re-entering Israel,
the West Bank, and Gaza "for 99 years".

Chabbott was just north of Masafer Yatta in at-Tawani, as part of the
International Solidarity Movement, when he said Israeli settlers arrived
with assault rifles and knives to confront Palestinian families.

When Chabbott and a fellow activist began filming, they were stopped by
Israeli forces, searched, and accused of being the ones who brought the
knives.

<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israeli-settlers-escalate-attacks-palestinians-west-bank>

Israeli settlers escalate attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank


"Then they realised that wasn't the case," Chabbott told MEE.

"They had these four Palestinian men zip-tied on the ground, with zip ties
that were on super tight. Their hands were purple," he said.

"And we were there maybe for about half an hour. And basically, in that
half hour, what it appears to me was happening was the settlers and the
military were getting their story straight that they were going to make up.
I never got anyone else's point of view [and they didn't] interview the
Palestinians."

Chabbott was arrested and interrogated, had his phone confiscated, and was
put into a detention cell before being sent back to California.

He stressed the need for Americans to understand that there is no
protection for Palestinian families in the West Bank as the number of
Israeli settlements grows.

"They literally have free reign to do whatever they want, whenever they
want," he told MEE.

"They can just come in, steal a bunch of stuff, break solar panels, and
eventually, you know, some of these [Palestinian] families either get
orders to leave by the military, their homes are destroyed, or some just
give in because they're like, 'I can't live like this anymore'."
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