What happened to an Oscar winner is all too common

JVL Introduction

Hamdan Ballal is one of the winners of the Best Documentary Oscar for the film “No Other Land”, which chronicles the settler attacks backed by Israeli soldiers in Masafer Yatta and the surrounding area where he lives.  Last week he was arrested, along with two other Palestinians who were trying to stop a vicious settler attack on Susiya village.  He had been injured and the soldiers took him out of the ambulance to take him to jail.

As Ofer Cassif outilnes here, this is all too common and it should not take this happening to someone who has won an Oscar, to draw the attention of the world to what is happening throughout Area C of the West Bank.  The violence has escalated so much that at least 18 Palestinian communities have left their hamlets, despite enduring settler attacks for decades.  At least one of those hamlets, Zanuta, is close to Susiya and Masafer Yatta.

This article was originally published by The Guardian on Thu 27 Mar 2025. Read the original here.