Earlier this month, two British Labour MPs were denied entry to Israel and deported. They had planned to visit the occupied Palestinian territories. It was national news and provoked a minor diplomatic spat.
A week later, two more parliamentarians, independent MP Shockat Adam and Liberal Democrat MP Andrew George, actually got into Israel and toured the occupied Palestinian territories.
They returned to Britain just over a week ago with stories of being confronted by armed Israeli settlers, of being questioned by Israeli police on Adam’s religion – and of witnessing settlers intimidating Palestinians.
Few British newspapers or television channels paid any interest or reported on the trip.
Now, though, the Israeli settler movement is in the headlines. This is thanks to a new BBC documentary entitled The Settlers, which aired on Sunday night.
New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch
Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on
Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters
An excellent ITV documentary about the occupied West Bank which aired last month covered the same topic, even interviewing the same settler leader, but it received little attention.
This BBC documentary is different for one simple reason: its presenter is Britain’s most famous documentarian, Louis Theroux.
The award-winning journalist, 54, is renowned for his films in which he interviews some of the world’s strangest people, including American neo-nazis, porn stars and the criminal gangs of Lagos.
Theroux made a film in the West Bank fifteen years ago, in 2010.
Now he is back, he says, because after the Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October, he heard that “the settler community had cranked up its activities”.
Allowing fanatics to speak
The new documentary stoked controversy even before its release. In February, perhaps unexpectedly, The Spectator published a piece headlined “Why does Louis Theroux keep picking on Israeli settlers?”.
Now the film has received negative reviews in The Telegraph and the Daily Mail. The Guardian, on the other hand, has given it five stars.
Most of the documentary features Theroux doing what he has always done: giving fanatics the chance to speak and expose their views to the world. Theroux walks around with Israeli settlers. He shakes hands with them. He is hosted in a settler’s home.
No doubt, some will find this uncomfortable to watch.
But the great strength of the film is that it inherently undermines all the sophistry and intellectualising of the well-trained apologists and spokespeople for the Israeli government who so regularly appear on British news channels.
Early on in the film, Theroux visits the house of the “godmothee” of the Israeli settler movement, Daniella Weiss – who boasts that she can phone Benjamin Netanyahu’s aides. He puts it to her that the settlements are war crimes under international law.
“And you’re cooperating with the person that committed war crimes?” she asks.
“Well, I’m interviewing you,” Theroux responds.
Weiss laughs. “It’s a light felony.”
A chase by the Gaza border
Later, we follow Weiss driving close to the border of Gaza – facing an Israeli assault that had by then killed tens of thousands of Palestinians – with a military escort.
Suddenly her vehicle breaks away from the convoy and speeds off. The filmmakers follow in pursuit: Weiss is trying to reach the Gaza border. She is stopped by soldiers before she can get there.
“I wanted to show the rabbis that Gaza is not something beyond reach,” Weiss explains afterwards. She is campaigning for Jewish settlement in the besieged enclave.
One of the rabbis she is there with, Rabbi Dov Lior, explains of the Palestinians that “there was never peace with these savages”. He adds quite calmly that “all of Gaza, all of Lebanon should be cleansed of these camel-riders.” This, of course, is straighforwardly genocidal language.
At one point, Theroux confronts Weiss about settler violence against Palestinians. She says there is “no such thing”. He cites videos of the violence.
Weiss responds: “Let’s say – we have a camera here – and I do this.” She shoves Theroux in the chest with both hands. “Do something. You dont mind what I did to you?”
Theroux says he won’t push her back. A disappointed Weiss explains that if he pushed her, the camera could film only that part and claim he is “violent against a woman”.
Her suggestion is that violent settlers are only responding to Palestinian violence against them (which in the real world is rare). Theroux tells her bluntly that her lack of any concern for Palestinian lives “seems sociopathic”.
‘What do I look, Chinese?’
The film is careful to contextualise what it depicts through frequent voiceovers. The settlements, we are repeatedly reminded, are illegal under international law.
Again and again, we see Theroux encounter fanatical settlers from America.
“How are you doing, what’s up?” one man calls to him from a car in the Palestinian city of Hebron, in an unmistakeable Brooklyn accent.
“American?” Theroux asks.
“What do I look, Chinese?”
Ari Abramowitz, another settler we are introduced to, is a Texan born and raised. Now he helps run the tourist hotspot Arugot Farm, which started as an illegal Israeli outpost.
Abramowitz wears a cap and sunglasses, and carries a gun. He explains in an American accent that “I’m so uncomfortable using the word ‘Palestinian’ because I don’t think it exists”. Unfortunately for him, it does.
‘Can we call the police?’
The film does well at depicting the difficulties Palestinians go through at the hands of the Israeli authorities.
In the south Hebron hills, Theroux watches soldiers tell local Palestinians they are not allowed to pick olives and have to leave.
And in the town of Tuwani, he visits a Palestinian home. At night an army vehicle approaches. Soldiers surround the building armed with rifles, and shine lasers through the windows.
“What can we do?” Theroux asks. “Can we call the police?” His Palestinian hosts look unimpressed.
In Hebron he is toured around by Issa Amrou, a Palestinian activist. Soldiers come up to them and ask Amrou if he is Palestinian. They tell him he is not allowed in that area.
“Why can’t he be with us?” Theroux asks innocently.
“There are limits for Palestinians,” the soldier explains.
Theroux’s voiceover describes this as an “unequal system of rights and justice”. He falls short of calling it apartheid, the label used by Amnesty International and B’TSelem, Israel’s largest human rights group.
Trolling Israeli soldiers
Some of the most extraordinary scenes feature Theroux doggedly annoying Israeli soldiers and security personnel.
They invariably demand to see his passport; he invariably asks why.
“Why are you filming me?” a masked soldier in Hebron asks angrily. Theroux points out that no one can see his face anyway, on account of his mask. The soldier grabs him and tells him to leave.
“No, no, no, don’t touch me,” Theroux objects. “You just touched me,” he adds on a factual note. A British journalist can behave in this way without having to worry.
‘The settler dream shows no sign of abating, along with the dislocation, displacement and death that follows’
– Louis Theroux
Elsewhere his car is stopped at a checkpoint. A soldier (whom Theroux has politely asked to lower his gun) asks how long he plans to spend in Israel.
“Hang on, I don’t think we’re in Israel,” our intrepid presenter responds.
“Huh?” The soldier is confused.
“Are we in Israel?” Theroux asks.
“You’re in Israel now.”
“Are we?”
“Yes.”
“In the West Bank, no?” The scene cuts.
The dark heart of the settler movement
This is a brilliant documentary. It allows the Israeli settler movement – shown to be operating with the support of the state – to broadcast its violent fanaticism and racism to the British public, most of whom will be appalled and disgusted.
The film is particularly important because earlier this year the BBC pulled a documentary on Gaza’s children, after it was revealed that the ten-year-old narrator’s father is a technocrat in Gaza.
Theroux’s father is not, so the BBC likely has nothing to worry about.
The film has already made a splash and is sure to draw many more viewers on BBC iPlayer. This is a triumph for British journalism, and for the country’s public broadcaster.
It could also hardly come at a more important time: since January this year, after the documentary was made, Israel launched Operation Iron Wall, which the UN says has so far seen tens of thousands of Palestinians forced from their homes. Palestinians are killed and driven from their homes with each passing day.
In the film’s conclusion, Theroux argues that the settler movement is “advanced by ideologues, backed up by those in power and accountable only to God.”
He has little optimism about the future: “The settler dream shows no sign of abating, along with the dislocation, displacement and death that follows inevitably in its train.” No cheerful ending on this Theroux outing.