Oscar-winning Palestinian director says Israeli soldiers beat him after attack by settlers

HEBRON, West Bank (AP) — 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.

On Tuesday, Ballal – his face bruised and clothes still spotted with blood – recounted to The Associated Press how he was heavily beaten by an Israeli settler and soldiers the night before. The settler, he said, kicked his head “like a football” during a settler attack on his village.

The soldiers then detained him and two other Palestinians. Ballal said he was kept blindfolded for more than 20 hours, sitting on the floor under a blasting air conditioner. The soldiers kicked, punched or hit him with a stick whenever they came on their guard shifts, he said. 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 Tuesday. “When they say ‘Oscar’, you understand. When they say your name, you understand.”

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to the claims that Ballal was beaten by soldiers. The settler whom Ballal identified as his attacker, Shem Tov Luski — who has threatened Ballal in the past — 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.

The Israeli military said Monday it had detained three Palestinians suspected of hurling rocks as well as one Israeli civilian, who was soon released. Ballal denied throwing stones.

The attack took place Monday night in the southern West Bank village of Susiya. It’s part of the Masafer Yatta region featured in “No Other Land,” which depicts the Palestinian residents’ attempts to fend off settler attacks and the military’s plans to demolish their homes.

At around sunset, as residents were ending their daylong Ramadan fast, roughly two dozen Jewish settlers along with police entered the village, throwing stones at houses and breaking property, witnesses say. Around 30 soldiers arrived soon after. Jewish Israelis in an activist group supporting the villagers showed video of themselves also being attacked, with settlers hitting their car with sticks and stones.

Ballal said he filmed some of the damage caused by the settlers. Then he went to his own home and locked it, with his wife and three young children inside.

“I told myself if they will attack me, if they kill me, I will protect my family,” he said.

Ballal said Luski approached with two soldiers. He said Luski hit him on the head, knocked him to the ground and kept kicking and punching him in the head. At the same time, one soldier hit him on the legs with his gun butt, while the other pointed his weapon at him, he said.

Lamia Ballal, the director’s wife, said she was huddling inside with their children and heard him screaming, “I’m dying!”

Luski told the AP that he and other settlers had come to the village to help a fellow settler who said he was being attacked by Palestinian stone-throwers. He said dozens of masked Palestinians attacked his car with stones, including Ballal. "He broke my window, threw a stone at my chest,” he said.

He said when soldiers arrived, he led them to Ballal's house to identify him as one of the attackers but denied that he hit him or that settlers attacked any property in the village. Luski said he had footage of the night’s events but when asked to show it to the AP, he responded with a string of expletives.

On Tuesday, a small bloodstain could be seen outside Ballal's home, and the family car’s windows were shattered. Neighbors pointed to a nearby water tank with a hole in the side that they said had been punched by the settlers.

Lea Tsemel, the attorney representing Ballal and the two other Palestinians detained with him, said they were taken to an army base, where they only received minimal care for their injuries from the attack. She said they had no access to them for several hours after their arrest.

Ballal said he had no idea where he was being held, could see nothing and was “freezing” from the hours spent blindfolded under the air conditioner.

The three were transferred to an Israeli police station at the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba and were released Tuesday afternoon.

“All my body is pain,” he told the AP immediately after his release as he walked, limping, toward a hospital in the nearby Palestinian city of Hebron.

Doctors at the hospital said Ballal had bruises and scratches all over his body, abrasions under his eye and a cut on his chin but no internal injuries. The two other detained Palestinians also had minor injuries.

In a widely circulated video from August, Luski and several other masked settlers are seen arguing with Ballal. Luski shouts profanity at him and tries to provoke him into a fight.

“This is my land, I was given it by God,” Luski says. “Next time it won’t be nice.” He taunts Ballal with the prospect of being sent to Sde Teiman, a notorious military prison holding Palestinians detained from Gaza, where five soldiers have been charged with raping a detainee with a knife.

“Rape for a higher cause,” he says in Hebrew, then blows Ballal a kiss.

The film “No Other Land,” a joint Israeli-Palestinian production, chronicles the situation in Masafer Yatta, which the Israeli military designated as a live-fire training zone in the 1980s and ordered the expulsion of the residents, mostly Arab Bedouin. Around 1,000 residents have largely remained in place, but soldiers regularly come in to demolish homes, tents, water tanks and olive orchards.

Settlers have also set up outposts around the area and at times destroy Palestinian property. Palestinians and rights groups say Israeli forces usually turn a blind eye or intervene on behalf of the settlers.

The film has drawn ire in Israel and abroad, as when Miami Beach proposed ending the lease of a movie theater that screened it.

Basel Adra, another of the film’s co-directors and a prominent Palestinian activist in the area, said there’s been a massive upswing in attacks by settlers and Israeli forces since the Oscar win.

“We’re living in dark days here, in Gaza, and all of the West Bank," he said. "Nobody’s stopping this.”

Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war, along with the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. The Palestinians want all three for their future state.

Israel has built well over 100 settlements, home to over 500,000 settlers who have Israeli citizenship. Most of the international community considers the settlements illegal.

The 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank live under seemingly open-ended Israeli military rule, with the Western-backed Palestinian Authority administering population centers.

The war in Gaza has sparked a surge of violence in the West Bank, with the Israeli military carrying out widescale military operations that have killed hundreds of Palestinians and displaced tens of thousands. There has been a rise in settler violence as well as Palestinian attacks on Israelis.

AP correspondent Natalie Melzer in Nahariya, Israel, contributed to this report.

Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

Hamdan Ballal, Oscar-winning Palestinian director of "No Other Land," is released from a police station in the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba a day after being detained by the Israeli army following an attack by Jewish settlers, Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

Muhammad Mughanem and his wife Najah show their damaged water tank following a settler's attack in the village of Susiya in Masafer Yatta, south Hebron hills Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

Muhammad Mughanem, sits in front of his house the day after a settler's attack in the village of Susiya in Masafer Yatta, south Hebron hills Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

Hamdan Ballal, Oscar-winning Palestinian co-director of "No Other Land," is checked at a hospital in Hebron, a day after being detained by the Israeli army following an attack by Jewish settlers in the village of Susiya in Masafer Yatta, Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

Hamdan Ballal, Oscar-winning Palestinian director of "No Other Land," is released from a police station in the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba a day after being detained by the Israeli army following an attack by Jewish settlers, March 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

Hamdan Ballal, Oscar-winning Palestinian director of "No Other Land," is released from a police station in the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba a day after being detained by the Israeli army following an attack by Jewish settlers, March 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

Hamdi Ballal, mother of Hamdan Ballal, a Palestinian co-director of the Oscar winner documentary "No Other Land", who was attacked by Jewish settlers before being detained by the Israeli army, looks on in their house in the village of Susiya in Masafer Yatta, south Hebron hills Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

A man walks near the house of Hamdan Ballal, co-director of the Oscar winner documentary "No Other Land", who was attacked by Jewish settlers before being detained by the Israeli army, in the village of Susiya in Masafer Yatta, south Hebron hills Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

Basel Adra, Palestinian co-director of the Oscar winner documentary "No Other Land", looks at a damaged car after a settler's attack in the village of Susiya in Masafer Yatta, south Hebron hills Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

Students walk on a road near the house of Hamdan Ballal, co-director of the Oscar winner documentary "No Other Land", who was attacked by Jewish settlers before being detained by the Israeli army in the village of Susiya in Masafer Yatta, south Hebron hills Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

Basel Adra, one of the directors of the Oscar winner documentary "No Other Land", speaks on the phone as he sits in an area near the house of Palestinian co-director Hamdan Ballal, in the village of Susiya in Masafer Yatta, south Hebron hills Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

Lamia Ballal, wife of Hamdan Ballal, a co-director of the Oscar winner documentary "No Other Land", looks on as she sits at their house in the village of Susiya in Masafer Yatta, south Hebron hills, Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

Basel Adra, Palestinian co-director of the Oscar winner documentary "No Other Land", looks at the damaged car of the Palestinian co-director Hamdan Ballal, who was attacked by Jewish settlers before being detained by the Israeli army in the village of Susiya, in Masafer Yatta, south Hebron hills, Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A pilot and two girls survived on the wing of a plane for about 12 hours after it crashed and was partially submerged in an icy Alaska lake, then were rescued after being spotted by a good Samaritan.

Terry Godes said he saw a Facebook post Sunday night calling for people to help search for the missing plane, which did not have a locator beacon. On Monday morning about a dozen pilots including Godes headed out to scour the rugged terrain. Godes headed toward Tustumena Lake near the toe of a glacier and spotted what he thought was wreckage.

“It kind of broke my heart to see that, but as I got closer down and lower, I could see that there's three people on top of the wing,” he told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

After saying a prayer, he continued to approach and saw a miracle.

“They were alive and responsive and moving around,” Godes said, adding that they waved at him.

The missing Piper PA-12 Super Cruiser, piloted by a man with two juvenile immediate family members aboard, was on a sightseeing tour from Soldotna to Skilak Lake on the Kenai Peninsula.

The three were rescued on the eastern edge of Tustumena Lake on Monday by the Alaska Army National Guard after Godes alerted other searching pilots that he had found it. Another pilot, Dale Eicher, heard Godes' radio call and related it to troopers since he was closer to Skilak Lake and figured he had better cell reception. He was also able to provide the plane's coordinates to authorities.

“I wasn’t sure if we would find them, especially because there was a cloud layer over quite a bit of the mountains, so they could have very easily been in those clouds that we couldn’t get to,” Eicher said. But finding the family alive within an hour of starting the search “was very good news.”

The three were taken to a hospital with injuries that were not considered life-threatening, Alaska State Troopers said.

Godes said many miracles were at play, from the plane not sinking, to the survivors being able to stay atop the wing, to them surviving nighttime temperatures dipping into the 20s (subzero Celsius).

“They spent a long, cold, dark, wet night out on top of a wing of an airplane that they weren’t planning on,” Godes said.

Alaska has few roads, leaving many communities to rely on small airplanes to get around.

Last month 10 people died when a small commuter plane that was overweight by half a ton crashed onto sea ice in the Norton Sound, near Nome on the state’s western coast.

And five years ago, a midair collision near the Soldotna airport claimed seven lives including that of a state lawmaker.

For this week's rescue, the National Guard dispatched a helicopter from its base in Anchorage.

The initial plan of using a hoist to pluck them from the wing proved too dangerous, as the the smallest girl was being buffeted and blown around by the wind created by the helicopter, said Lt. Col. Brendon Holbrook, commander of the 207th Aviation Regiment. So instead the aircraft hovered to the side and pulled them on board.

Personnel reported that the girls were surprisingly dry but the man had been in the water at some point, Holbrook said: “We don't know to what extent, but he was hypothermic.”

Holbrook said he was told they had basic clothing one would wear on small planes without very good heating systems, but nothing sufficient to keep warm outside in wintry temperatures with cold winds blowing on the lake.

“It was literally the best possible scenario and outcome,” Holbrook said. "Ultimately the crew of that airplane were lucky, because from what my guys told me, that plane was in the ice with the tail refrozen, and if that tail hadn’t refrozen, it would have sunk.”

The 60,000-acre (24,200-hectare) Tustumena Lake, the largest freshwater body on the Kenai Peninsula, is about 80 miles (130 kilometers) southwest of Anchorage, with nearby mountains and a glacier.

It has been described by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game as “notorious for its sudden, dangerous winds,” with conditions that can cause havoc for both boats and planes.

“The terrain helps turn the winds around, and occasionally they get a little squirrelly,” said Michael Kutz, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Anchorage.

Godes agreed that the area is always windy and the water can be whipped up into waves.

“Then just the way it’s placed right there at the heel of that, or at the toe of that glacier where you’ve got mountains on both sides, you know, just a few miles to the west, you’ve got Cook Inlet running back and forth with huge temperature and tidal swings every day,” he said. “It’s just a recipe for chaos and for turbulence.”

There was no indication yet why the plane crashed.

Mark Ward, an investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board’s Alaska division, said the pilot had not yet reported the accident, nor had the agency been able to contact him. Efforts were to be made again Wednesday to speak to him.

This photo provided by the Alaska National Guard shows an airplane partially submerged into the ice of Tustumena Lake at the toe of a glacier on Monday, March 24, 2025, near Soldotna, Alaska. (Alaska National Guard via AP)