society, and Palestinian solidarity was palpable on March 25 after news spread that Oscar-winning documentarian Hamdan Ballal had been freed from Israeli detention. The lauded cocreator of No Other Land, which won the Academy Award for best documentary earlier this month, had been beaten bloody by masked Jewish settlers, who attacked him near his house in the Occupied West Bank, with rocks and sticks. Then Ballal was arrested and thrown in jail, presumably on charges of assaulting an innocent rock. As one of his codirectors, Basel Adra, said to the Associated Press: “We came back from the Oscars and every day, there is an attack on us. This might be their revenge on us for making the movie. It feels like punishment.”

For hours, no one seemed to know where Hamdan was taken. (The answer was eventually discovered to be a police station in Kiryat Arba, a Jewish-only settlement.) But, following a public outcry, including a forceful and indignant statement in Variety from the International Documentary Association, he was released. Despite being unchained (literally, he was chained), he still need medical attention, and this remains an ugly attack on free speech, freedom of expression, and art as a means of truth-telling, as well as an outright attack on Palestinian existence. Israel’s purpose in such an assault reminds me of a quotation by Howard Zinn, who stated, “Whenever I grow discouraged (which is on alternate Tuesdays between three and four), I lift my spirits by The artists are on our side! I mean those poets and painters, singers and musicians, novelists and playwrights who speak to the world in a way that is impervious to assault because they wage the battle for justice in a sphere which is unreachable by the dullness of ordinary political discourse.”

Ballal helped make a work of art that has smashed through more than the dullness. It shatters the sociopathy and and scorn for Palestinian existence pervades “ordinary political discourse” about Israel and Palestine. That is why Israel isn’t using “discourse” to quiet Ballal. There is no “counter-film” in production. Instead, Israel’s solution for keeping Zinn’s “artists on our side” from speaking truth and making art is to just kill them.

Ballal’s story could have turned out very differently, but it did not, thanks in part to the international outrage. Even as people rallied around his cause, another atrocity, this time a targeted assassination, was committed on another Palestinian truth-teller. According to witnesses, the lauded 23-year-old Drop Site and Al Jazeera journalist Hossam Shabat was slain by an IDF missile, which struck his car without notice. Knowing Shabat, who has been reporting in Northern Gaza for 18 months, means knowing a brave and tireless journalist. He was moved 20 times while continuing to report and suffered from acute food shortage as Israel prevented aid from entering the Strip. Israel has an open policy of targeting reporters in Gaza makes Shabat’s, and all of the journalists still on the ground, both heroic and increasingly scarce. On the day he was assassinated, Palestine Today correspondent Mohammed Mansour was also killed by the IDF in Khan Younis. This brings the number of slain Palestinian media members, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, to over 170 in the past 18 months.

Shabat’s loss will be felt deeply by his family, friends, and colleagues. It will also be felt by those of us who have relied on his efforts to raise awareness about what is happening in Gaza. Shabat’s Drop Site editor Sharif Abdel Kouddous wrote the following about an exchange they had at the end of last year: