The Settlers – Radio Free

Theroux’s Film on Israel’s Violent Settlers Was a Mirror

Jonathan Cook — Tue, 13 May 2025 15:56:49 +0000

For once, the BBC aired a documentary showing Israeli society’s dark underbelly. The backlash is not because Louis Theroux got it wrong. It’s because his film tells us far too much about ourselves

Louis Theroux explains in a commentary published by the Guardian on 10 May why the backlash to his recent film about violent, Israeli state-backed settlers misses the point.

His critics say he is unfairly presenting a few marginal “crazies” in Israeli society, who rampage across the West Bank to drive out the native Palestinian population, as significant and influential.

That’s exactly what they are, Theroux responds.

Settler leader Daniella Weiss, who Theroux spent much time following and interviewing, “enjoys enormous clout within the Israeli cabinet and … has the protection of the army in her project of settler expansionism”.

He quotes Haaretz journalist Etan Nechin in noting that the setters’ “representatives are literally sitting in the government and control everything from the police to treasury”.

Theroux makes a further point about why it is important to focus on the settlers and understand what they really represent.

“A film about extreme West Bank settlers isn’t simply about a region of the Middle East. It’s also about ‘us’,” he writes in the Guardian.

He adds: “The urgency here is that West Bank settlers are a bellwether for where society may be going in countries across the west… Around the same time that the documentary aired, Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is a settler, was being hosted at [Donald Trump’s] Mar-a-Lago.”

There has been a backlash to Theroux’s documentary – just as there is continuing support for Israel, even as it commits what the International Court of Justice deems a “plausible genocide” – precisely because those extremists are “us”.

The gun-toting, stone-throwing, orchard-burning, house-torching settlers are from Texas, London and Paris. And so are many of the soldiers – some of them volunteers from western countries – who are currently slaughtering and enforcing the starvation of children in Gaza.

It is “us” watching this genocide unfold in slow-motion and shrugging our shoulders, or both-sidesing the stream of constant Israeli crimes on our screens. It is “us” still sending weapons to make the genocide possible. It is “us” decrying the protesters marching against the genocide, against the starvation of babies, as “antisemites”, “haters” and “supporters of terrorism”.

Israel’s crimes didn’t begin 19 months ago. They date back a century or more. They began with Britain’s sponsorship of an exclusive Jewish enclave imposed on the Middle East – a colonising state-to-be that was always going to require the containment and ultimately the expulsion, or extermination, of the native, Palestinian population.

That process had nothing more to do with “Jewish control” then than it does now. After all, it was an arch anti-semite, Arthur Balfour – Lord Balfour – who wrote the infamous Balfour Declaration in 1917 promising a Jewish state on the Palestinians’ homeland. He was supported by the entire British cabinet – apart from Edwin Montagu, the only Jewish government minister, who rightly lamented Britain’s support for a Jewish state in Palestine as evidence of his countrymen’s enduring antisemitism.

Why were Balfour and the other government ministers so keen to have “the Jews” in the Middle East?

Religious reasons played a part, to be sure. But more important were all-too practical, foreign policy objectives.

First because, like other governments driven by ethno-nationalist sentiment that was then running riot in European capitals, the British government preferred that “a Jewish state”, dependent on Britain, would project its interests as a British colony in the oil-rich Middle East.

If Britain didn’t seek to promote and harness a European Jewish presence in the region first – to weaponise those Jews against “the natives” – France or Germany might do so instead.

It was a race between European powers for regional control. Though ultimately, of course, they were beaten to the finishing line by the United States, which has been Israel’s main patron since the founding of a so-called “Jewish state” through the mass ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people in 1948.

The crimes Israel carries out today were engineered – made inevitable – by the decisions western powers took from the early twentieth century onwards.

Which is why Theroux is right that we in the West are responsible for Israel’s actions in a way that is entirely untrue of Burma or China or Russia.

Israel’s supporters want us looking away from Israel’s crimes to Burma’s, China’s or Russia’s precisely because Israel is “us”. Its state terrorism is ours.

If the Israel fortress colony falls, so the fear goes, the West’s system of colonial power projection – those 800-plus military bases the US has stationed around the world in its bid for “global full-spectrum dominance” – will begin to unravel with it.

Israel is still secretly viewed by the West – by “us” – as it was by the father of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, 130 years ago: as “a rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism”.

Those cheerleading Israel’s genocide, or staying complicity silent, are the ideological inheritors of Lord Balfour and his ugly racism.

Either they wish for “the Jews” to complete the takeover of historic Palestine – exterminating or ethnically cleansing what is left of “the natives” – as a public flexing of “our” muscle, as a demonstration of who controls the world, of what awaits anyone who defies “our” might.

Or they have been so brainwashed by a fearmongering western narrative that the world is divided into two – and only the western half is actually civilised – that the slaughter and maiming of many tens of thousands of Palestinian children and the starvation of a million more seems a reasonable, even moral, response to the state of the world.

Yes, the West’s Jewish populations have been more easily sold on this preposterous notion because, given their history of western persecution, they are more easily persuaded to live in a state of permanent fear, they are more readily convinced by establishment narratives that there are exceptional reasons to support this genocide.

But “our” leaders are no less in thrall to this kind of perverse logic. They gain their positions only after they have been fully initiated into an institutionalised system of power that requires fealty to western – chiefly US – projection of dominance across the globe.

Whatever Starmer’s personal feelings (assuming he has any), the fact is he is not wrong in proclaiming that his government is in no position to impose a sales ban on the components for F-35 fighter jets, the ones dropping bombs on Gaza’s population to level their homes and shred their children.

As his government implicitly acknowledges, the West’s system of arms production is necessarily so tightly integrated that no one, apart from the central hub of empire headquartered in the US, is in a position to change course. The West’s arms industries, just like its financial industries, are simply too big to fail.

Britain is locked in to producing F-35 components not specifically because Israel needs them, but because the West – because the US – needs them for its projection of power, for its continuing control of resources, for its global dominance – or, in the British government’s bogus rhetoric, to safeguard “Nato security” and “international peace”.

Were Starmer to dare to refuse, it would be no different from some local, small-time mafia boss telling the Don in Washington to take a hike. The British prime minister knows his fate would be straight out of a Sopranos script.

This too is the reason why he has been secretly shipping weapons to Israel for use in Gaza – more than 8,500 items – in violation of the promise he made to the British public last year that the shipments had stopped.

While Starmer has to placate those in his party who cannot stomach being complicit in genocide, he also has to keep the Don happy. And the Don is far more dangerous than either Starmer’s party or the British parliament.

Theroux’s film, The Settlers, is a vanishingly rare example of popular documentary-making showing Israeli society’s dark underbelly. The backlash is not because his thesis is wrong. It is because it tells us far too much about ourselves.

The post Theroux’s Film on Israel’s Violent Settlers Was a Mirror first appeared on Dissident Voice.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jonathan Cook.

The Encampments vs October 8 – a battle of narratives on Palestine plays out in cinema

Pacific Media Watch — Fri, 09 May 2025 15:05:15 +0000

This article was initially set out to focus on The Encampments, Kei Pritsker and Michael T Workman’s impassioned documentary that chronicles the Columbia University student movement that shook the United States and captured imaginations the world over.

But then it came to my attention that a sparring film has been released around the same time, offering a staunchly pro-Israeli counter-narrative that vehemently attempts to discredit the account offered by The Encampments.

October 8 charts the alleged rise of antisemitism in the US in the wake of the October 7 attacks on southern Israel by Hamas-led Palestinian fighters.

READ MORE: The Israeli war on Gaza in film narratives

A balanced record though, it is not. Wendy Sachs’s solo debut feature, which has the subhead, “The Fight for the Soul of America”, is essentially an unabashed defence of the silencing of pro-Palestinian voices.

Its omissions are predictable; its moral logic is fascinatingly disturbing; its manipulative arguments are the stuff of Steven Bannon.

It’s easily the most abhorrent piece of mainstream Israeli propaganda this writer has come across .

Ignoring October 8 would be injudicious, however. Selected only by a number of Jewish film festivals in the US, the film was released in mid-March by indie distribution outfit Briarcliff Entertainment in more than 125 theatres.

The film has amassed more than $1.3 million so far at the US box office, making it the second-highest grossing documentary of the year, ironically behind the self-distributed and Oscar-winning No Other Land about Palestine at $2.4 million.

October 8 has sold more than 90,000 tickets, an impressive achievement given the fact that at least 73 percent of the 7.5 million Jewish Americans still hold a favourable view of Israel.

“It would be great if we were getting a lot of crossover, but I don’t know that we are,” Sachs admitted to the Hollywood Reporter.

Zionist films have been largely absent from most local and international film festivals — curation, after all, is an ethical occupation — while Palestinian stories, by contrast, have seen an enormous rise in popularity since October 7.

The phenomenon culminated with the Oscar win for No Other Land.

October 8 . . . “easily the most abhorrent piece of mainstream Israeli propaganda this writer has come across.” Image: Briarcliff Entertainment

But the release of October 8 and the selection of several Israeli hostage dramas in February’s Berlin Film Festival indicates that the war has officially reached the big screen.

With the aforementioned hostage dramas due to be shown stateside later this year, and no less than four major Palestinian pictures set for theatrical release over the next 12 months, this Israeli-Palestinian film feud is just getting started.

Working for change
The Encampments, which raked in a highly impressive $423,000 in 50 theatres after a month of release, has been garnering more headlines, not only due to the fact that the recently detained Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil happens to be one of its protagonists, but because it is clearly the better film.

Pritsker and Workman, who were on the ground with the students for most of the six-week duration of the set-in, provide a keenly observed, intimate view of the action, capturing the inspiring highs and dispiriting lows of the passionate demonstrations and wayward negotiations with Columbia’s administrations.

The narrative is anchored from the point of views of four students: Grant Miner, a Jewish PhD student who was expelled in March for his involvement in the protests; Sueda Polat, a protest negotiator and spokesperson for the encampments; Naye Idriss, a Palestinian organiser and Columbia alumni; and the soft-spoken Khalil, the Palestinian student elected to lead the negotiations.

A desire for justice, for holding Israel accountable for its crimes in Gaza, permeated the group’s calling for divesting Columbia’s $13.6 billion endowment funds from weapons manufacturers and tech companies with business links to the Netanyahu’s administration.

Each of the four shares similar background stories, but Miner and Khalil stand out. As a Jew, Miner is an example of a young Jewish American generation that regard their Jewishness as a moral imperative for defending the Palestinian cause.

Khalil, meanwhile, carries the familiar burden of being a child of the camps: a descendant of a family that was forcibly displaced from their Tiberias home in 1948.

The personal histories provide ample opportunities for reflections around questions of identity, trauma, and the youthful desire for tangible change.

Each protester stresses that the encampment was a last and only resort after the Columbia hierarchy casually brushed aside their concerns.

These concerns transformed into demands when it became clear that only more strident action like sit-ins could push the Columbia administration to engage with them.

In an age when most people are content to sit idly behind their computers waiting for something to happen, these students took it upon themselves to actively work for change in a country where change, especially in the face of powerful lobbies, is arduous.

Only through protests, the viewers begin to realise, can these four lucidly deal with the senseless, numbing bloodshed and brutality in Gaza.

Crackdown on free speech
Through skilled placement of archival footage, Pritsker and Workman aptly link the encampments with other student movements in Columbia, including the earlier occupation of Hamilton Hall in 1968 that demonstrated the university’s historic ties with bodies that supported America’s involvement in the Vietnam War.

Both anti-war movements were countered by an identical measure: the university’s summoning of the New York City Police Department (NYPD) to violently dismantle the protests.

Neither the Columbia administration, represented by the disgraced ex-president Minouche Shafik, nor the NYPD are portrayed in a flattering fashion.

Shafik comes off as a wishy-washy figure, too protective of her position to take a concrete stance for or against the pro-Palestinian protesters.

The NYPD were a regular fixture outside universities in New York during the encampments during 2024 Image: MEE/Azad Essa

The NYPD’s employment of violence against the peaceful protests that they declared to have “devolved into antisemitic and anti-Israel rhetoric” is an admission that violence against words can be justified, undermining the First Amendment of the US constitution, which protects free speech.
The Encampments is not without flaws. By strictly adhering to the testimonials of its subjects, Pritsker and Workman leave out several imperative details.

These include the identity of the companies behind endowment allocations, the fact that several Congress senators who most prominently criticised the encampments “received over $100,000 more on average from pro-Israel donors during their last election” according to a Guardian finding, and the revelations that US police forces have received analysis of the Israel-Palestine conflict directly from the Israeli army and Israeli think tanks.

The suggested link between the 1968 protests and the present situation is not entirely accurate either.

The endowments industry was nowhere as big as it is now, and there’s an argument to be made about the deprioritisation of education by universities vis-a-vis their endowments.

A bias towards Israel or a determination to assert the management’s authority is not the real motive behind their position — it’s the money.

Lastly, avoiding October 7 and the moral and political issues ingrained within the attack, while refraining from confronting the pro-Israel voices that accused the protesters of aggression and antisemitism, is a major blind spot that allows conservatives and pro-Israel pundits to accuse the filmmakers of bias.

One could be asking too much from a film directed by first-time filmmakers that was rushed into theatres to enhance awareness about Mahmoud Khalil’s political persecution, but The Encampments, which was co-produced by rapper Macklemore, remains an important, urgent, and honest document of an event that has been repeatedly tarnished by the media and self-serving politicians.

The politics of victimhood
The imperfections of The Encampments are partially derived from lack of experience on its creators’ part.

Any accusations of malice are unfounded, especially since the directors do not waste time in arguing against Zionism or paint its subjects as victims. The same cannot be said of October 8.

Executive produced by actress Debra Messing of Will & Grace fame, who also appears in the film, October 8 adopts a shabby, scattershot structure vastly comprised of interviews with nearly every high-profile pro-Israel person in America.

The talking heads are interjected with dubious graphs and craftily edited footage culled from social media of alleged pro-Palestinian protesters in college campuses verbally attacking Jewish students and allegedly advocating the ideology of Hamas.

Needless to say, no context is given to these videos whose dates and locations are never identified.

The chief aim of October 8 is to retrieve the victimisation card by using the same language that informed the pro-Palestine discourse

Every imaginable falsification and shaky allegation regarding the righteousness of Zionism is paraded: anti-Zionism is the new form of antisemitism; pro-Palestinian protesters harassed pro-Israel Jewish students; the media is flooded with pro-Palestinian bias.

Other tropes include the claim that Hamas is conspiring to destabilise American democracy and unleash hell on the Western world.

Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of a Hamas co-founder who defected to Israel in 1997, stresses that “my definition of Intifada is chaos”.

There is also the suggestion that the protests, if not contained, could spiral into Nazi era-like fascism.

Sachs goes as far as showing historical footage of the Third Reich to demonstrate her point.

The chief aim of October 8 is to retrieve Israel’s victimhood by using the same language that informs pro-Palestine discourse. “Gaza hijacked all underdog stories in the world,” one interviewee laments.

At one point, the attacks of October 7 are described as a “genocide”, while Zionism is referred to as a “civil rights movement”.

One interviewee explains that the framing of the Gaza war as David and Goliath is erroneous when considering that Hamas is backed by almighty Iran and that Israel is surrounded by numerous hostile countries, such as Lebanon and Syria.

In the most fanciful segment of the film, the interviewees claim that the Students for Justice in Palestine is affiliated and under the command of Hamas, while haphazardly linking random terrorist attacks, such as 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting to Hamas and by extension the Palestinian cause.

A simmering racist charge delineate the film’s pro-Israel discourse in its instance on pigeonholing all Palestinians as radical Muslim Hamas supporters.

There isn’t a single mention of the occupied West Bank or Palestinian religious minorities or even anti-Hamas sentiment in Gaza.

Depicting all Palestinians as a rigid monolith profoundly contrasts Pritsker and Workman’s nuanced treatment of their Jewish subjects.

The best means to counter films like October 8 is facts and good journalism

There’s a difference between subtraction and omission: the former affects logical form, while the latter affects logical content.

October 8 is built on a series of deliberate omissions and fear mongering, an unscrupulous if familiar tactic that betrays the subjects’ indignation and their weak conviction.

It is thus not surprising that there is no mention of the Nakba or the fact that the so-called “civil rights movement” is linked to a state founded on looted lands or the grand open prison Israel has turned Gaza into, or the endless humiliation of Palestinians in the West Bank.

There is also no mention of the racist and inciting statements by far-right ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.

Nor is there mention of the Palestinians who have been abducted and tortured and raped in Israeli prisons.

And definitely not of the more than 52,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza to date.

Sachs’ subjects naturally are too enveloped in their own conspiracies, in the tightly knotted narrative they concocted for themselves, to be aware of their privilege.

The problem is, these subjects want to have their cake and eat it. Throughout, they constantly complain of being silenced; that most institutions, be it the media or college hierarchies or human rights organisations, have not recognised the colossal loss of 7 October 7 and have focused instead on Palestinian suffering.

They theorise that the refusal of the authorities in taking firm and direct action against pro-Palestinian voices has fostered antisemitism.

At the same time, they have no qualms in flaunting their contribution to New York Times op-eds or the testimonies they were invited to present at the Congress.

All the while, Khalil and other Palestinian activists are arrested, deported and stripped of their residencies.

The value of good journalism
October 8, which portrays the IDF as a brave, truth-seeking institution, is not merely a pro-Israel propaganda, it’s a far-right propaganda.

The subjects adopt Trump rhetoric in similarly blaming the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies for the rise of antisemitism, while dismissing intersectionality and anti-colonialism for giving legitimacy to the Palestinian cause.

As repugnant as October 8 is, it is crucial to engage with work of its ilk and confront its hyperboles.

Last month, the Hollywood Reporter set up an unanticipated discussion between Pritsker, who is in fact Jewish, and pro-Israel influencer Hen Mazzig.

The heated exchange that followed demonstrated the difficulty of communication with the pro-Israeli lobby, yet nonetheless underlines the necessity of communication, at least in film.

Mazzig spends the larger part of the discussion spewing unfounded accusations that he provides no validations for: “Mahmoud Khalil has links to Hamas,” he says at one point.

When asked about the Palestinian prisoners, he confidently attests that “the 10,000 Palestinian prisoners” — hostages, as Pritsker calls them — they have committed crimes and are held in Israeli prisons, right?

“In fact, in the latest hostage release eight Palestinian prisoners refused to go back to Gaza because they’ve enjoyed their treatment in these prisons.”

Mazzig dismisses pro-Palestinian groups like Jewish Voice for Peace and the pro-Palestinian Jewish students who participated in the encampments.

“No one would make this argument but here we are able to tokenise a minority, a fringe community, and weaponise it against us,” he says.

“It’s not because they care about Jews and want Jews to be represented. It’s that they hate us so much that they’re doing this and gaslighting us.”

At this stage, attempting for the umpteenth time to stress that anti-Zionism and antisemitism are not one and the same — a reality that the far-right rejects — is frankly pointless.

Attempting, like Khalil, to continually emphasise our unequivocal rejection of antisemitism, to underscore that our Jewish colleagues and friends are partners in our struggle for equality and justice, is frankly demeaning.

For Mazzig and Messing and the October 8 subjects, every Arab, every pro-Palestinian, is automatically an antisemite until proven otherwise.

The best means to counter films like October 8 is facts and good journalism.

Emotionality has no place in this increasingly hostile landscape. The reason why The Bibi Files and Louis Theroux’s The Settlers work so well is due to their flawless journalism.

People may believe what they want to believe, but for the undecided and the uninformed, factuality and journalistic integrity — values that go over Sachs’ head — could prove to be the most potent weapon of all.

Joseph Fahim is an Egyptian film critic and programmer. He is the Arab delegate of the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, a former member of Berlin Critics’ Week and the ex director of programming of the Cairo International Film Festival. This article was first published by Middle East Eye.

The Encampments, directed by Kei Pritsker and Michael T Workman (Watermelon Pictures); October 8: The fight for the Soul of America, directed by Wendy Sachs (Briarcliff Entertainment).

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

Jewish Settler-Colonialists

Kim Petersen — Fri, 02 May 2025 15:57:15 +0000

The straightforward responses in the documentary The Settlers by Louis Theroux will not surprise anyone who has kept abreast of the long-running Zionist plan to create facts-on-the-ground in Palestine. What is surprising is that this documentary was produced and broadcast by the BBC, a broadcaster that is usually inimical to Palestinian suffering. The documentary (currently viewable at Rumble.com) has been noticed. [Editor’s Note: The documentary has been blown away already. And Rumble has posted no explanation. See 404 notice below.]

Zionist-triggered Western censorship at its best.

The Independent considers The Settlers to be a “masterpiece.”

The Middle East Eye hails the documentary as “an unflinching look at the Israelis [sic] intent on stealing the West Bank.”

The Islam Channel praises Theroux for “highlight[ing] the horrifying influence of the illegal Israeli settler movement.”

The title of the Spectator’s review was rather enigmatic: “How come the only Palestinians Louis Theroux met were non-violent sweeties?” The Spectator granted, “In a program called The Settlers, it’s perhaps fair enough that the focus should be so squarely on these people and their intransigence.”

And what about the documentary’s title?

Dictionary.com defines settler innocuously as “a person who settles in a new region or colony.” Is this the proper appellation? Others would argue that the term settler-colonialist is more accurate. The Legal Information Institute of Cornell Law School states, “Settler colonialism can be defined as a system of oppression based on genocide and colonialism, that aims to displace a population of a nation (oftentimes indigenous people) and replace it with a new settler population.”

The documentary begins with the lanky, bespectacled Theroux asking a settler whether they are “deep inside the Palestinian territories”? The settler-colonialist Ari Abramowitz objected, calling it “the heart of Judea.” He further objected to a “jihadist Palestinian state” being located in the heart of Israel.

Abramowitz is forthright in saying he aspires to win territory from Palestinians.

The settler-colonialists are described as “religionist nationalists.” A young Jewish woman Ovi says, “I believe Gaza is ours … The Bible says this place was given to the Jews. This place is ours.”

Throughout the documentary, the Zionist goal is clear: to remove Palestinians and repopulate the land with Jews.

Theroux spends much time interviewing Daniella Weiss, the “godmother of the settler movement,” an unabashed Zionist, who claimed: “We do for governments what they cannot do for themselves… Netanyahu is very happy at what we do but he cannot say it.”

Gaza fits what Netanyahu cannot say, Weiss states the goal of “the practical idea of establishing Jewish settlements in the entire Gaza Strip. We very much encourage and enable the population in Gaza to go to other countries. You will witness how Jews go to Gaza and Arabs disappear from Gaza. They lost their right to stay in this holy place.”

But Jews are not a pure monolith. Theroux interviews a protesting Israeli man who says, “The question is: what kind of country do we want to be? Do we want to be a colonizing country or do we want to be a country that at least offers peace and wants to live in peace with Palestinians?”

What can Gazans expect if settler-colonialists create outposts in Gaza? The documentary examines the situation in the West Bank where outposts are set up to expand and become communities with the aim of becoming recognized as settlements by the Israeli government. These outposts and settlements are under the protection of the Israeli military.

The Texan-raised Abramowitz denies Palestinians exist. When pressed by Theroux on this, Abramowitz replies, “They are Arabs.”

The illegality of settlements is disregarded by Abramowitz. This is echoed by Weiss who shrugs off the commission of war crimes as a “lighter felony.”

Such Zionist views point to the impunity of settler colonialists in dealing with the indigenous Palestinians. One common war crime is preventing Palestinian farmers from harvesting their produce, particularly olives. Israeli soldiers will arrive, demand identification, and send the farmers away from their land. And if a farmer is lucky, he will still be alive after the encounter.

The filmmaker spoke of an “ideology of superiority of one group over another.” This even has rabbinical support.

Rabbi Dove Leor said, “To my mind, there was never peace with these [Palestinian] savages. There is no peace and never will be…. This land belongs only to the people of Israel. All of Gaza, all of Lebanon should be cleansed of these ‘camel riders.’”

To accomplish the disappearance of Palestinians, Weiss advocates using “the magic system of Zionism” to take over the land and repopulate it with Jews. “This will bring light instead of darkness,” says Weiss.

Issa Amrou, a Palestinian activist, guides Theroux around occupied Hebron and explains the life of Palestinians under occupation. The system of encouraging Palestinians to leave is through fear of the Israeli soldiers, checkpoints, closing Palestinian businesses, making life intolerable, and fragmentation of Palestinian towns, leading to Jews taking more land.

Near the end of the documentary, Theroux speaks again with the Texan-cum-settler-colonialist Abramowitz who makes known his feelings for Palestinians: “I don’t have tremendous compassion for a society that has an unquenchable genocidal, theological, bloodlust. It’s like a death cult.”

Says Abramowitz, “I reject the real premise that these people [Palestinians] are actually a real nation for a lot of reasons.”

“We know the righteousness of our cause. That’s what it means to be a Hebrew, what it means to be a Jew…”

The Israeli government’s recognition of the Evyatar settlement in the lands of the Palestinian town of Beita spurred a celebration, and Weiss arrived to speak to a jubilating crowd.

Theroux catches up with the settler-colonial godmother after her speech to the festive gathering. He asks what is wrong with a two-state solution?

Says Weiss, “We want to have a Jewish state based on Jewish rules, on Jewish values. It is not a relationship of neighbors.”

“Why not?” asks Theroux.

“Because we are two nations.” At least Weiss admits to there being a Palestinian nation.

Weiss makes clear that her overarching aim is Aliyah, bringing more settler-colonialists to the land. She does not think about the Palestinians because she is a Jew.

Theroux says, “That seems sociopathic.”

Weiss rejects this, saying, “It is normal.”

In the settler-colonialist Zionist mindset, othering is normal.

*****

People who care about humans elsewhere and are unfamiliar or uninformed about the plight of Palestinians ought to watch The Settlers and become familiar and informed. Theroux probably presents the situation as close to the line as one could hope to have broadcast. Through the narrative, the viewer will hear that there is anti-Palestinian racism and violence against them, but the discussion will not be graphic, and visually the violence is downplayed.

The post Jewish Settler-Colonialists first appeared on Dissident Voice.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Kim Petersen.