Hamdan Ballal recently learnt that an Oscar does not protect one from Zionists. It does not shield you from the crack of a rifle butt against your skull or the boot pressed into your ribs. Weeks after winning the honour for No Other Land, a documentary exposing the erasure of Palestinian communities, the filmmaker Ballal found himself living the very story he had told. When masked settlers stormed his neighbour’s home, in the village of Susiya, he did what he had always done—he documented. When he tried to film Israeli settlers attacking his neighbour’s house, they followed Ballal home. A soldier joined in as a settler beat him viciously, kicking him on the head after he fell to the ground. Instead of receiving treatment, he was blindfolded, handcuffed and taken to a military base, disappeared for more than 20 hours, where they mocked his Oscar as they beat him further….

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