LOS ANGELES: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences apologised on Friday for failing to defend a Palestinian Oscar-winner who was attacked by Israeli settlers.

The group, which hosts and awards the Oscars each year, wrote to members after movie stars including Joaquin Phoenix, Penelope Cruz and Richard Gere had 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.

Hamdan Ballal co-directed “No Other Land”, which won best documentary at this year’s Academy Awards.

Over 600 members condemn ‘brutal assault and unlawful detention’ of filmmaker by Israeli settlers and forces

He said he was assaulted by settlers and detained at gunpoint by soldiers in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Unlike multiple other prominent filmmaker groups, the US-based Academy initially did not issue a statement. It sent a letter to members that condemned “harming or suppressing artists for their work or their viewpoints,” without naming Ballal.

More than 600 Academy members later signed their own statement in response. “It is indefensible for an organisation 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 issued an apology to Ballal “and all artists who felt unsupported by our previous statement.”

Published in Dawn, March 30th, 2025