No Other Land‘s Yuval Abraham has called out the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for its lack of support regarding the violent abduction of the documentary’s co-director, Hamdan Ballal. “Sadly, the US Academy, which awarded us an Oscar three weeks ago, declined to publicly support Hamdan Ballal while he was beaten and tortured by Israeli soldiers and settlers,” Abraham writes in a post to Twitter/X. “The European Academy voiced support, as did countless other award groups and festivals. Several US Academy members—especially in the documentary branch—pushed for a statement, but it was ultimately refused.”
Abraham shared news of the abduction on Monday, which prompted outcry from some in the film co*munity. However, “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 now says. “In other words, while Hamdan was clearly targeted for making No Other Land (he recalled soldiers joking about the Oscar as they tortured him), 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 honored, living under Israeli occupation, needed them the most.”
The conflict in Gaza and the West Bank remains a divisive and emotional issue in Hollywood, and public support for Palestine is still a career risk for some. This week, it was reported that megaproducer Marc Platt personally flew to New York to try to convince Rachel Zegler to take down a “free Palestine” social media post she shared amid promotion for Disney’s Snow White. Zegler is apparently being blamed internally for some of Snow White‘s box office failure due to her political posts.
Meanwhile, Ballal has thankfully been freed and returned to his family, but he’s “more scared now than before,” believing that the settler attacks will continue. He detailed his experience with the attack and abduction to The Guardian, explaining that he’d been on the scene to document the attack by masked settlers. When the violence escalated he ran back to his home to warn his wife, but he was followed by a settler and two Israeli soldiers. “The soldiers pointed their rifles at me while the settler from behind began beating me,” the photographer told the outlet. “They threw me to the ground, and the settler started hitting me on the head. Then a soldier also began beating me; with the butt of his rifle, he struck me on the head. After that, he fired his weapon in the air. I don’t understand Hebrew, but I gathered that he said the next rifle shot would hit me. In that moment, I thought I was going to die.”
In Ballal’s view, “It was a revenge for our movie,” he said. “I heard the voices of the soldiers, they were laughing about me … I heard [the word] “Oscar.'” He added, “We won the Oscar just three weeks ago, and the violence has escalated. Not only against me, not only against the activists and other crew members of the film, but against all the residents.”
Abraham, a Jewish Israeli journalist who called for an end to the “destruction of Gaza and its people” while accepting the Oscar for No Other Land, urges the Academy to speak up in his Twitter/X post. “It’s not too late to change this stance,” he writes. “Even now, issuing a statement condemning the attack on Hamdan and the Masafer Yatta co*munity would send a meaningful message and serve as a deterrent for the future.”