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Academy apologises for failure to back Palestinian Oscar winner over attack

Letter signed by almost 700 members offers support to Hamdan Ballal after initial statement had failed to name director

The letter came after Ballal, who directed the documentary No Other Land and won an Academy Award earlier this year, was attacked and beaten by a group of Israeli settlers and at least two soldiers in the West Bank village of Susiya, in the rural Masafer Yatta area of the south Hebron hills. Bleeding from his head, handcuffed and blindfolded, Ballal, whose documentary chronicles the struggle by Palestinians of the West Bank to stop the army from demolishing their villages, was then moved to a military base and held in custody for one night before being released the following day. On Wednesday, the No Other Landco-director Yuval Abraham claimed on X that the Academy, which organises the Oscars, “sadly, declined to publicly support Hamdan Ballal while he was beaten and tortured by Israeli soldiers and settlers.

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