The Daily Reid: if everyone isn't safe and free...

then none of us is free.

This is the moment that a film made history. On Sunday, March 2nd, 2025 “No Other Land,” co-directed by a group of Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers: Basel Adra, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal and Yuval Abraham, won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature Film. The award was presented by Hollywood stars Selena Gomez and Samuel L. Jackson at the 97th Academy Awards. Here are the speeches by two of the filmmakers: Mr. Adra, followed by Mr. Abraham:

Adra and Abraham’s passionate joint plea for the shared humanity of Palestinians and Israelis, and Adra’s call out of the occupation and ethnic cleansing of his people were historic, in that those ideas are not typically welcome in the U.S., or even in Hollywood, where Israel in general enjoys broad support (even if the current far right wing government of Bibi Netanyahu and the religious fanatics he has surrounded himself with, do not.) And the film apparently touches all the third rails: exposing the rampant violence against Palestinians by extremist settlers in the West Bank, and the decades long history of settler seizures of Palestinian family farms, olive orchards and homes at gunpoint, often with the Israeli military looking on (or helping the settlers). The film is a poignant message to the world — well at least those in the world who are allowed to see it, since despite its accolades, the film has yet to land a U.S. distributor.

Here’s the trailer:

The man standing behind his fellow filmmakers on Oscar night, Hamdan Ballal, was recently injured in the West Bank, and detained. His arrest was witnessed by Mr. Adra, who like Mr. Yuval is a human rights activist, in his case, in the West Bank. Here’s the report from CNN:

The Palestinian co-director of Oscar-winning film “No Other Land” Hamdan Ballal was beaten up by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank and taken away by Israeli soldiers, his colleagues and eyewitnesses said.

Ballal’s co-director Basel Adra told CNN that he had gone to Ballal’s home in the West Bank village of Susya on Monday after Ballal called him in distress. He arrived to see Ballal and at least one other person being taken away.

Outside Ballal’s home was a group of Israeli settlers, some of whom were throwing stones, Adra said. Israeli police and military were also outside the home and Israeli soldiers were firing at anyone who tried to get close, he added.

The Israeli military said it had arrived at the scene of a “violent confrontation” between Palestinians and Israelis who were throwing rocks at each other. It said the fight had broken out after several “terrorists hurled rocks at Israeli citizens, damaging their vehicles.”

Three Palestinians and an Israeli were then taken in for questioning after “several terrorists” threw rocks at the security forces, it said.

Yuval Abraham, another co-director of the film, who is Israeli, said Ballal had sustained injuries to his head and abdomen and had not been heard from since. Abraham did not witness the incident himself.

Ballal was in the process of being released on Tuesday afternoon after being held overnight in police detention in Kiryat Arba’a, an Israeli settlement in the West Bank, his lawyer told CNN.

CNN has reached out to Israeli authorities for more details on his detention.

And here is video of Mr. Ballal’s arrest, from Al Jazeera English:

Tammy Bruce, the spokeswoman for the current State Department was asked about it in her daily briefing, and this is what she said:

I hate to say it, but as bland as that answer was, it was better than what we used to hear out of the Biden State Department, which had this way of reflexively justifying anything done by the Netanyahu government and the IDF, while presuming, often without evidence, that no crimes were committed even against Palestinian Americans. It’s one of the reasons Vice President Harris lost the election, in my humble opinion: her inability to separate herself, and what I know for fact to be her much more compassionate attitude, from Biden’s inexplicable cold-heartedness in this area. But I digress…

There are also eyewitness accounts to Mr. Ballal’s arrest, including this one via one of my favorite news sources: LBC.

Mr. Ballal has since been released; likely due to the international attention and outcry. Palestinian journalists (and ad hoc journalists just chronicling their lives and persecution in the West Bank and Gaza since the start of Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza) who are less well known to the mainstream media are also suffering and dying. From CNN Daily this morning:

On Sunday night Hossam Shabat, a 23-year-old Palestinian journalist living in northern Gaza and working for Al Jazeera, filed a dispatch to Drop Site News, a liberal Substack publication. On Monday morning he was killed in an Israeli airstrike.

The Israeli military said it targeted Shabat and alleged that he was a "sniper terrorist from the Beit Hanoun Battalion of the Hamas terrorist organization" who "cynically posed" as a journalist. But both Al Jazeera and Drop Site are defending him. "Hossam was a tremendous young journalist who exhibited remarkable courage and tenacity," Drop Site News said in a statement. His editor, Sharif Abdel Kouddous, has published Shabat's final dispatch, which was "translated through tears." You can read it here (with a subscription.)

“Can’t you see that we are intertwined?”… that my people can be truly safe if Basel’s people are truly safe, and free?” — Yuval Abraham on the Oscars stage.

So why would all of this matter to Americans? Well, the fact is that as long as Palestinians can be menaced in their own land, under a decades-long military occupation, conducted by a country touted as the “only democracy in the Middle East” … as long as they can be displaced and removed en masse … then what can’t that “democracy” do, not just to Palestinians, but to Israelis who dissent? What can’t that “democracy” do to other non-Jewish, or Jewish but also African or Asian residents of that country, who have come there for work or for asylum? When even supposed democracies cross over into the behavior of autocracies, particularly with international impunity, then all barriers to discrimination, occupation, subjugation and even state violence come down. And in that instance, what can’t our teetering democracy in America do to us?

Notes on the disappeared

Currently in the U.S., people are being disappeared. And that’s not me being hyperbolic. Not only are people being detained at the border, including German tourists, Canadian nationals and others, provoking foreign governments to issue travel warnings about the United States (map here), ICE is arresting, detaining immigrants and shipping them to a notorious prison in El Salvador. From NBC News:

Attorneys are sounding the alarm about the unknown whereabouts of 48 people after immigration raids swept through three New Mexico cities in March.

The American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico said in a civil rights complaint that the absence of families searching for loved ones who were taken away is an anomaly. They are calling for an investigation regarding the whereabouts and well-being of the "disappeared individuals" in the complaint filed Sunday with the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.

The people were "snatched up" in Santa Fe, Roswell and Albuquerque, and ACLU and other organizations have been unable to locate them since the weeklong raids ended March 8, said Rebecca Sheff, senior staff attorney at the ACLU New Mexico.

“We don’t have anybody and that’s exactly the concerns, that they’ve been effectively ‘disappeared.’ We have yet to learn any of their identities or whereabouts or the authorities under which they were held or conditions of their detention. We don’t know if they’ve already been deported,” Sheff said.

“Disappeared” is a word that has most often been used in reference to people secreted away by military or law enforcement in repressive regimes in Latin America and other regions.

NBC News did not immediately receive a response after asking DHS about the whereabouts of those arrested and whether any had been deported or released.

Recall that this is the same administration that in its first iteration, under the same cruel, nonwhite immigrant-targeting goon squad, separated and disappeared more than a thousand migrant children, some of whom have still not been reunited with their families.

More on the lasting harm of these grotesque and inhumane Trump - Stephen Miller - Tom Homan policies here.

And never forget that Miller is this guy:

I’m sure it sounded better in the original German…

Please enjoy Tiffany Cross deftly handling the racism and cruelty of the Trump disappearing and deportation policy, during a panel this week on CNN:

“Nazis were treated better…”

And the hunting is both ethnic and ideological. A Korean American college student who has lived in America since she was a child, is now suing to stop the regime from deporting her over her activism for Palestinians:

United States permanent resident and Columbia University student Yunseo Chung, 21, has sued US President Donald Trump’s administration to halt her deportation, accusing authorities of using the same tactics employed against other college activists over their pro-Palestinian views.

Chung said US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) moved to deport her after she was arrested on March 5 while protesting against Columbia University’s disciplinary actions against student protesters.

In a lawsuit filed on Monday, Chung said that in the days after her arrest ICE officials signed an administrative arrest warrant and went to her parents’ residence seeking to detain her for deportation.

Chung is accused of having “engaged in concerning conduct” and was arrested during a “pro-Hamas protest”, according to a senior spokesperson at the Department of Homeland Security.

“She is being sought for removal proceedings under the immigration laws. Chung will have an opportunity to present her case before an immigration judge,” the spokesperson said.

Immigration agents have not been able to detain Chung despite visiting her parents’ residences multiple times, according to reports.

Chung, who migrated to the US from South Korea with her parents when she was seven years old, is seeking a court order to block the Trump administration’s efforts to deport non-citizens who participated in campus protests against Israel’s war on Gaza. She is also asking a judge to prevent the administration from detaining her, moving her out of New York City or removing her from the country while her lawsuit plays out.

There's a lot of competition, but Columbia University might be this country’s most cowardly institution. And again, there is a lot of competition…

When in doubt: yell “Russia, Russia, Russia!”

Updating this week’s big headline, Fox weekend host-turned defense secretary Pete Hegseth responded to the embarrassment and potential illegality of groupchatgate and its revelation of how sloppy and careless this cartoonish administration is … by denying all personal responsibility and pulling out one of Trump’s favorite go-tos…

This while other members of the group chat including Tulsi Gabbard, deny any classified information was shared on the disappearing messages app. Wait: wouldn’t a pending military operation against a foreign adversary be classified, by default???

Also, remember back in the “but her emails” days, when Fox Weekend guy said this?

If he had any integrity, wouldn’t Hegseth resign? Just the fact that he and the other cabinet members were allegedly chatting about war plans on a privately owned app that allows disappearing messages, which could be targeted by our adversaries, and which clearly defies FOIA rules, seems fireable??? And if he wasn’t someone who wasn’t also accused of being careless with national security information, wouldn’t Trump fire Fox Weekend Pete?

CNN has this great post on the intentional amateur hour at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

And let’s let Tiffany have the last word … again from CNN…

Nuff said.

[This post has been updated.]