‘No other land:’ Oscar-winning Palestinian director says settler assault won’t push him from his home

In a small village in the Hebron hills of the occupied West Bank, Hamdan Ballal stood outside his house in a track suit with a black eye.

In a small village in the Hebron hills of the occupied West Bank, Hamdan Ballal stood outside his house in a track suit with a black eye. He held the hand of his 18-month-old daughter, who stood in a pool of his dried blood. Things looked quite different for the award-winning director just weeks ago. He had flown to Los Angeles to accept an Oscar for the film, “No Other Land,” a documentary he co-directed about the violence and forced displacement of Palestinian villagers for illegal Israeli settlements in those same hills. Ballal was attacked by a mob of Israeli settlers in front of his home, in the village of Susya on Monday evening. “I thought they would kill me,” he said. Ballal told CNN that a group of settlers arrived to his village and started to attack his neighbors, two farmers in their 60s, as night fell. When he tried to document the violence, three masked settlers, including one who had previously attacked him and is known to authorities, came after him, he said, beating him outside his front door as his wife Lamya, and their three small children screamed in fear for his – and their – lives.