Palestinian Oscar winner goes missing after brutal assault by Israeli settlers

A Palestinian film director and Academy Award winner, Hamdan Ballal, was brutally assaulted by a group of Israeli settlers in the village of Susya, south of Hebron in the occupied West Bank, on Monday night. According to eyewitnesses, the attackers resembled a "lynch mob."

Susya is an Israeli settlement built on Palestinian land in the West Bank. The international laws described this as “illegal”, but most of the US administrations kept their eyes closed on the violation of Article 49 of the Geneva Convention. 

Israeli journalist and film director of No Other Land confirmed Ballal’s disappearance after he was lynched by a group of settlers and expressed unfamiliarity with his whereabouts. 

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

He also shared a video featuring the masked settlers who “attacked Hamdan’s village, they continued to attack American activists, breaking their car with stones,” but it was deleted from the account.

A group of five Jewish-Americans, the Center for Jewish Nonviolence, released a statement after the incident, stating: “The activists responded to the calls to come and support the village of Susiya while it was under attack.” 

Read: Documentary on Israel's demolition of Palestinian homes wins Oscar

The activists arrived at the spot and attempted to resolve the issue, but it could not be sorted out, and they were also attacked by the settlers, when they returned to their car for shelter, assailants besieged their car, slashed its tyres, and smashed the window by pelting the stones.

“Ballal is still missing after soldiers abducted him, injured and bleeding,” said Basel Adra, a Palestinian resident of Masafer Yatta, whose story was told in the winning film.

"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.