Hamdan Balal’s co-director tells an attack on the Oscar winner’s home

Three weeks ago, Palestinian filmmaker Hamdan Balal stood in front of the Hollywood world cameras, taking an Oscar for the best documentary.

The cameras watched him again on Tuesday, the hand of his bruised face as he moved awkwardly in blood, after almost 24 hours in Israeli detention.

Last night, he told reporters who had gathered outside, “settlers and soldiers (were) attacking my home.” They began to “beat me and threaten me with weapons,” he added in quotes reported by the AP news agency. The soldiers said, they fired three times in the air.

In custody – where he said he had his eyes and was held under a cold air conditioner – soldiers joke that he was an Oscar winner.

Just a little time earlier, outside the village house on the hill, which he shares with his wife and children, a gray family car sits on flattened, sliced ​​tires, his windows being torn apart and the wipers are torn apart.

This is a sign of the seriousness of violence on Monday night, here, on the edge of Susa on the southern occupied west coast.

Hamdan’s co-director Basel Adra is outside the house of his phone, nervously trying to get news about his friend’s detention. He tells me how he heard about problems with the beginning of last night and came to help.

“I saw about 15 settlers vandalizing one of the homes and breaking the car, stabbing the water tanks and throwing rocks at anyone who moves.

“It was dangerous. I was afraid of my life. I started telling people to run away. We started running in different directions.”

He says Hamdan has locked himself inside and tried to protect his family, but realized that he was bleeding and needed emergency medical attention. He was arrested then.

Hamdan is a well -known journalist and activist. Colleagues say it was directed by settlers in the past.

Israeli defense forces say that violence on Monday began when “terrorists threw the rocks of Israeli citizens by harming their transport funds.”

“Then a violent confrontation broke out, involving mutual rocking of rocks between Palestinians and Israelis.”

Josh Kimmelman also came to help. He is a 28-year-old American living on the west coast for three months with the Center for Jewish Nadness. He disputes the IDF version of how the violence began.

“What I know is that there were Palestinian shepherds who were harassed by settlers and then they started attacking houses here.”

Josh from New Jersey describes how his car and his colleagues were attacked on their arrival.

“Our three friends got out of the car and were immediately attacked by settlers,” he says.

“There was one who started it and then a mafia followed from maybe 15 to 20 masked settlers. They hit one of my friends in the face and neck and hit another with a stick and made it. And they started throwing rocks in our car.”

Josh thinks violence has begun intentionally.

“Probably this attack was planned. It was definitely coordinated. You don’t get a crowd of 20 settlers attacking the way they did without any prior planning, and so they had specific people.”

Basel Adra says the violence of settlers has increased here in recent months.

“There are 45 attacks since the beginning of the year – only in this small village, not the whole mass.

“It’s like hundreds of attacks, every day something happens around the community, letting us live in scare and be scared.

“We are innocent, people living in our homes, surrounded by these terrorist settlers with weapons, with cars, with the army and the police who do not support us.”

Basel has just heard the news that Hamdan is about to be released after paying a guarantee, but he goes to a hospital for further treatment before he goes home.

Basel shows me the statue of Oscar, which was presented earlier this month a world far away in Los Angeles. He had high hopes that such global recognition could help improve people’s lives here.

“It’s disappointing,” he says. “The film reached the largest stage in the world. The name of Msafa Yata has become known, but that does not help us on Earth here.”