Palestinian Oscar-winning director Basel Adra said Israeli soldiers conducted a raid at his home in the occupied West Bank on Saturday (September 13, 2025), searching for him and going through his wife’s phone.
Israeli settlers attacked his village, injuring two of his brothers and one cousin, Adra told The Associated Press. He accompanied them to the hospital. While there, he said that he heard from family in the village that nine Israeli soldiers had stormed his home.
The soldiers asked his wife, Suha, for his whereabouts and went through her phone while his 9-month-old daughter was home. They also briefly detained one of his uncles, he said.
Adra spent the night outside the village, unable to get home and check on his family because soldiers were blocking the village entrance and he was scared of being detained, he said.
Israel’s military said soldiers were in the village after Palestinians had thrown rocks, injuring two Israeli civilians. It said its forces were still in the village, searching the area and questioning people.
Adra said settlers attacked the Palestinians on their land and denied throwing rocks or seeing anyone from the village do so.
Videos filmed by Adra’s cousin and viewed by the AP showed settlers attacking a man Adra identified as his brother, Adam Adra, who was hospitalised with bruising to his left hand, elbow and chest, according to hospital records shared with the AP.
Adra has spent his career as a journalist and filmmaker chronicling settler violence in Masafer Yatta, the southern reaches of the West Bank where he was born. After settlers attacked his co-director, Hamdan Ballal, in March, he told the AP that he felt they were being targeted more intensely since winning the Oscar.
He described Saturday’s (September 13, 2025) events as “horrific”.
“Even if you are just filming the settlers, the army comes and chases you, searches your house,” he said. “The whole system is built to attack us, to terrify us, to make us very scared.”