Israeli forces raided the home of Oscar-winning director Basel Adra on Saturday after settlers attacked his village and family in the occupied West Bank, sending one of his brothers to the hospital.
On Saturday afternoon, Israeli settlers attacked Adra’s village, al-Tuwani, in Masafer Yatta. The settlers injured two of Adra’s brothers and one of his cousins, he said, when the group tried to confront the settlers. They came from the nearby illegal Israeli outpost, Havat Ma’on.
Israeli police and soldiers came on the scene and enabled the violence, Adra said.
“The police, the army came when the settlers were attacking us,” Adra told CNN. “They did not stop them. One of the settlers chased one of the solidarity activists, and he beat her on the ground. The soldiers were watching, didn’t do anything.”
One of his brothers had to be hospitalized after a settler ran over him with an all-terrain vehicle.
When Adra accompanied him to the hospital, nine Israeli soldiers raided his home with his 9-month-old daughter inside, he said. They asked his wife for his whereabouts, searched her phone, and briefly detained one of his uncles.
Adra was specifically targeted by settlers for making the documentary No Other Land, which won an Oscar earlier this year. “Look, it’s the Oscar winner,” settlers said, according to co-director Yuval Abraham.
Adra was unable to return to the village all night, as Israeli forces blockaded the entrance and he feared being detained by the police.
Adra’s work documenting these very types of attacks on Masafer Yatta won him an Oscar in January. Yet the attacks continue with impunity for Israel and the settlers it enables, and the Emmy Awards occurred in Hollywood on Sunday with no mention of the attack on Adra or the other numerous attacks on Masafer Yatta in the past months.
This is at least the third attack on people involved in making No Other Land since its Oscar win. In March, Israeli forces detained co-director Hamdan Ballal from his home in Masafer Yatta, along with two other Palestinians, after an Israeli settler mob stormed his village.
Ballal was released from Israeli custody the next day bruised and bloodied after he was beaten and tortured by Israeli officers.
“Of course, after the Oscar, they have come to attack us more,” Ballal’s wife, Lamia, said at the time.
Then in July, an Israeli settler shot and killed Awdah Hathaleen, a Palestinian activist who helped film the documentary. When Palestinians set up a tent for villagers to mourn Hathaleen, Israeli soldiers raided the tent. Israeli forces also withheld his body and initially restricted his funeral service.
The Israeli government ordered a large swath of Masafer Yatta to be turned into a “firing zone” for the Israeli military in June, seeking to effectively seize the region as part of Israel’s plan to annex the West Bank. Human rights groups said that 1,200 Palestinians in Masafer Yatta are at risk of forced displacement due to the order.
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