Academy apologizes after stars say it ‘failed to defend’ Palestinian Oscar winner
Hamdan Ballal was interrogated for allegedly throwing stones as settlers attacked West Bank village; Awards body’s initial response condemned ‘suppressing artists’ without naming him
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences apologized Friday for failing to fully defend Oscar-winning Palestinian filmmaker Hamdan Ballal, who said he was attacked by settlers before he was detained by Israeli troops earlier in the week.
The group, which hosts and awards the Oscars each year, wrote to members after movie stars including Joaquin Phoenix, Penelope Cruz and Richard Gere slammed its initially muted response to the incident.
The Academy “condemns violence of this kind anywhere in the world” and its leaders “abhor the suppression of free speech under any circumstances,” said the letter, seen by AFP.
Ballal co-directed “No Other Land,” which won best documentary at this year’s Academy Awards.
Ballal was arrested by the Israel Defense Forces and was later interrogated by the police, along with two other Palestinians from the village of Susya in the southern West Bank, after a violent incident there.
They said that they were attacked with stones and beaten by settlers and soldiers before their arrest. The police informed them that they were suspected of rock-throwing, assaulting an Israeli, and damaging a vehicle.
The three were held overnight before being released on bail and taken to a Palestinian hospital for treatment.
Unlike multiple other prominent filmmaker groups, the US-based Academy initially did not issue a statement.
On Wednesday, it sent a letter to members that condemned “harming or suppressing artists for their work or their viewpoints,” without naming Ballal.
By Thursday morning, more than 600 Academy members had signed their own statement in response.
“It is indefensible for an organization to recognize a film with an award in the first week of March, and then fail to defend its filmmakers just a few weeks later,” the members said.
“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,” they wrote.
The Academy leadership’s response “fell far short of the sentiments this moment calls for,” said the members.
The Los Angeles-based group’s board convened an extraordinary meeting to confront the deepening crisis, according to trade outlet Deadline.
It issued an apology to Ballal “and all artists who felt unsupported by our previous statement.”
“We regret that we failed to directly acknowledge Mr Ballal and the film by name,” the letter said.
Yuval Abraham, one of the film’s Israeli co-directors, had criticized the Academy’s initial response.
“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. 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,” he posted on X.
Palestinian reports and eyewitnesses said dozens of settlers attacked Susya on Monday, throwing stones at residents, cars and houses. According to the police, the Palestinians responded by throwing stones back.
Footage from the village showed a masked individual throwing stones and attacking the Palestinians and hitting the car of activists who had come to assist the residents.
The IDF said the violence began “after a number of terrorists threw rocks toward Israeli citizens and struck their cars” near Susya.
The military did not immediately respond to the claims that Ballal was beaten by soldiers. A settler whom Ballal identified as his attacker, Shem Tov Luski, denied he or the soldiers beat him and told the AP that he and other Palestinians in the village had thrown stones at his car. He said he didn’t know Ballal was an Oscar winner.
Located in the West Bank’s South Hebron Hills, Susya is one of many Palestinian villages that have come under increasing duress from settlers from nearby outposts in recent years.
A massive uptick in settler attacks in the wake of Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught prompted former US president Joe Biden’s administration to issue a spate of sanctions against West Bank settlers in light of Israeli authorities’ apparent neglect to deal with the issue. The sanctions were rolled back by US President Donald Trump soon after he took office.
Many of the formerly sanctioned individuals live on outposts in the South Hebron Hills.
The Times of Israel Community.