Only a few weeks ago, Hamdan Ballal stood on a stage in Los Angeles accepting an Oscar for the film No Other Land, a documentary depicting his West Bank village’s struggle against Israel’s occupation. Ballal was heavily beaten by an Israeli settler and soldiers who detained him and two other Palestinians. Ballal said he was kept blindfolded, kicked and punched. Ballal doesn’t speak Hebrew, but he said he heard them saying his name and the word “Oscar.” “I realized they were attacking me specifically,” he said in an interview at a West Bank hospital after his release. Co-filmmaker Yuval Abraham called out the Academy for not publicly supporting Ballal.
