Just three weeks since No Other Land won Best Documentary Feature Film at the Academy Awards, the film’s Palestinian co-director Hamdan Ballal was beaten, kidnapped and tortured by Israeli settlers and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).
No Other Land documents the friendship between Palestinian filmmaker and lawyer Basel Adra and Israeli lawyer Yuval Abraham amid the IDF’s long siege of the village of Masafer Yatta in the Occupied West Bank.
Directed by a Palestinian-Israeli collective, including Ballal, Adra, Abraham and Rachel Szor, No Other Land’s Oscar win was a moment of celebration for Palestinians and supporters who have been resisting and protesting the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
In a March 24 social media post, Abraham said a group of settlers had attacked Ballal. “He has injuries in his head and stomach, bleeding. Soldiers invaded the ambulance he called, and took him.
“He’s injured and being held at a police station in a settlement. They did not let his lawyer speak to him yet so we don’t know more.”
The next day Ballal was released, covered in bruises and blood. He told Associated Press he had been blindfolded, handcuffed and forced to sleep under a “freezing” air conditioning unit.
Ballal’s lawyer said he had received little medical care for the injuries he sustained in the settlers’ attack.
Adra said the attack was carried out partly as revenge for the success of the film. “Because he carries his camera and documents what is going on, I think he is targeted and he was avenged this way at night,” he said. Ballal said his attackers had referenced his Oscar win.
There is a long history of settlers’ attacking Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank, as is depicted in the film. This has escalated since October 7, 2023, with more than 900 people killed, including nearly 200 children.
At least 1860 incidents of settler violence were recorded in the Occupied West Bank between October 7, 2023 and December 31 last year, an average of four attacks a day according to United Nations data.
“Of course, after the Oscar, they have come to attack us more,” Lamia Ballal, Hamdan Ballal’s wife, said.
Shamefully, the Academy was silent about the attack, claiming it had a responsibility to respect “unique viewpoints”. The statement did not mention Ballal or the film by name.
“We were told that because other Palestinians were beaten up in the settler attack, it could be considered unrelated to the film, so they felt no need to respond,” Abraham said.
“While Hamdan was clearly targeted for making No Other Land … he was also targeted for being Palestinian — like countless others every day who are disregarded.
“This, it seems, gave the Academy an excuse to remain silent when a filmmaker they honoured, living under Israeli occupation, needed them the most.”
The Academy’s silence is emblematic of a bigger push to silence Palestinian or pro-Palestinian voices in Hollywood.
Snow White star Rachel Zegler was blamed by Disney for the failure of its US$270 million live-action remake of the 1937 classic because of her pro-Palestine social media posts.
In an X post following the release of the film’s trailer in August last year, Zegler thanked fans for supporting the film and added: “and always remember, free Palestine”.
Disney sent the film’s producer Marc Platt to confront Zegler and demand she remove the post. Zegler stood her ground and refused. The post has since been seen by more than 14 million people.
Zegler has also been targeted by a racist campaign of people who are angry that a woman of Colombian descent is portraying the “white” character.
Zegler has also been vilified for posting “Fuck Donald Trump” and “May Trump supporters … never know peace” on Instagram.
Notably, Zegler’s Snow White co-star Gal Gadot, who served in the IDF from 2005–07, received no pushback from Disney for posting “I stand with Israel” and speaking at the Zionist Anti-Defamation League’s functions.
Disney and the corporate media’s attempt to point the blame at Zegler for Snow White’s box office failure, with headlines remarking “go woke, go broke”, conveniently ignore the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement’s call to boycott the film over Gadot’s involvement.
In reality, it is likely both factors had only a small role in the film’s failure, with other recent live-action remakes of classic Disney films, such as Dumbo, The Little Mermaid and Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, also failing to make a profit.
But for many, seeing a high-profile actress like Zegler speak out for Palestine is a breath of fresh air in a world that feels increasingly hostile to pro-Palestine sentiment.
Fortunately, Zegler is not the only artist speaking up against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
A group of more than 300 Academy members, including Mark Ruffalo, Boots Riley, John Cusack and Ava DuVernay, signed an open letter condemning the Academy for refusing to speak up for Ballal.
“We stand in condemnation of the brutal assault and unlawful detention of Oscar-winning Palestinian filmmaker Hamdan Ballal by settlers and Israeli forces in the West Bank,” the letter said.
“The targeting of Ballal is not just an attack on one filmmaker — it is an attack on all those who dare to bear witness and tell inconvenient truths.”
“Every filmmaker and academy member should be acting together in protest,” Ruffalo said on social media.
Actress and comedian Hannah Einbinder used her Human Rights Campaign Visibility Award acceptance speech to speak out against the genocide.
“As a queer person, as a Jewish person and as an American, I am horrified by the Israeli government’s massacre of well over 65,000 Palestinians in Gaza,” she said.
“I am ashamed and infuriated that this mass murder is funded by our American tax dollars. It should not be controversial to say that we should all be against murdering civilians.”