Louis Theroux: The Settlers | |
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Directed by | Josh Baker |
Written by | Louis Theroux |
Produced by |
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Starring | Louis Theroux |
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Distributed by | BBC |
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Running time | 61 minutes |
Country | Palestine |
Language | English |
Louis Theroux: The Settlers is a 2025 BBC documentary film by Louis Theroux about illegal Israeli settlers in the West Bank and the movement for Israeli settlement of the Gaza Strip during the Gaza war. The film features interviews with Palestinians and Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, including prominent far-right Zionist settler Daniella Weiss. The film is a part of Louis Theroux's BBC Two specials.
The West Bank, including East Jerusalem, has been under military occupation by Israel since 7 June 1967, when Israeli forces captured the territory, then ruled by Jordan, during the Six-Day War. [a] The status of the West Bank as a militarily occupied territory has been affirmed by the International Court of Justice and, with the exception of East Jerusalem, by the Israeli Supreme Court. [2] The West Bank, excepting East Jerusalem, is administered by the Israeli Civil Administration, a branch of the Israeli Ministry of Defense. [3] [4] [b] Considered to be a classic example of an "intractable conflict", [7] [c] Israel's occupation is now the longest in modern history. [8] [d] [9] [10] Though its occupation is illegal, [e] Israel has cited several reasons for retaining the West Bank within its ambit: historic rights stemming from the Balfour Declaration; security grounds, both internal and external; and the area's symbolic value for Jews. [11]
Israel has controversially, and in contravention of international law, established numerous Jewish settlements throughout the West Bank. [12] The United Nations Security Council has repeatedly affirmed that settlements in that territory are a "flagrant violation of international law", most recently in 2016 with United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334. [13] The International Court of Justice has also found that the establishment of Israeli settlements is illegal under international law. [14] The creation and ongoing expansion of the settlements have led to Israel's policies being criticized as an example of settler colonialism. [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [f]
Israel has been accused of major violations of international human rights law, including collective punishment, in its administration of the occupied Palestinian territories. [g] Israeli settlers and civilians living or traveling through the West Bank are subject to Israeli law, and are represented in the Knesset; in contrast, Palestinian civilians, mostly confined to scattered enclaves, are subject to martial law and are not permitted to vote in Israel's national elections. [h] This two-tiered system has caused Israel to be accused of committing apartheid, a charge that Israel rejects entirely. [25] [i] [26] [27] [28] Israel's vast military superiority, with a modern army and air force, compared to the Palestinian use of guerrilla tactics, has led to accusations of war crimes on both sides, with Israel being accused of disproportionality and the Palestinians accused of indiscriminate attacks.
The occupation also has numerous critics within Israel itself, with some Israeli conscripts refusing to serve due to their objections to the occupation. [29] The legal status of the occupation itself, and not just the actions taken as a part of it, have been increasingly scrutinized by the international community and by scholars in the field of international law, with most finding that regardless of whether the occupation had been legal when it began, it has become illegal over time. [30] [ page needed ] [31] [ page needed ] [j]14 years before The Settlers, Louis Theroux made the 2011 documentary The Ultra Zionists; it was similarly centered on Israeli settlers in the West Bank. [50] [51]
Earlier in 2025, the BBC had released and subsequently pulled a separate documentary on the effect of the Gaza war on children in the Gaza Strip in Palestine titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone. It was pulled after it was reported that the child who narrated the film was the son of the deputy minister for agriculture in the ruling Hamas administration. [52]
The film's creation was announced on 10 February 2025. It was commissioned by the BBC's Head of Documentary Commissioning Clare Sillery. It was directed by Josh Baker with senior producer Sara Obeidat, producer Matan Cohen, production manager Emily Wallace, and executive producers Fiona Stourton and Arron Fellows. [50]
Louis Theroux traveled to the West Bank for three weeks in late 2024 to film the documentary. He characterized his style of documentary film making as "perpetrator focused". [53] Describing his intentions when creating the film, he wrote:
My aim was to observe [Israeli ultra-nationalist settlers] up close, to try to understand their mind-set and their actions, and to get a sense of the impact of their presence on the lives of the millions of Palestinians who live in the region. [53]
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In the documentary, Theroux interviews and observes both Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank and members of the Israeli settler movement. Theroux interviews Ari Abramowitz, an Israeli settler from Texas, United States. [54] [55]
He speaks with and follows prominent far-right Zionist settler Daniella Weiss as she holds meetings of groups aiming to reoccupy the Gaza Strip and makes an attempt to enter the territory herself. [51] [56] During the film, she claims to have recruited 800 Israeli families to become future settlers in the Gaza Strip; she also claims that the movement has the support of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who she says is unable to express it publicly. [56]
Theroux meets Malkiel Bar-Hai, a founder of the settlement Evyatar. [55] [57]
He talks to and travels through the occupied Palestinian city of Hebron with Issa Amro, a Palestinian activist, navigating through IDF checkpoints and around areas in which Amro and other Palestinians are not allowed. [58] [59]
While Theroux is with Mohammad Hureini, a Palestinian activist living under Israeli occupation in Masafer Yatta, Hureini, his crew, and him have to hide in a building as Israeli soldiers point guns and laser sights at them. [55] [60]
Stuart Heritage, writing for The Guardian, frames the film as a comeback for Theroux after his perceived downturn post-COVID-19 pandemic, describing it as a "true watershed moment in his career". [51] He rated it 5 out of 5 stars, [51] as did Gerard Gilbert of The i Paper who described it as "among his best". [55] William Mullally, who similarly rated it a '5/5', of The National wrote that it "has the chance to change hearts and minds around the world" because of Theroux's positive reputation and BBC platform. [61]
In an opinion piece for Middle East Eye, Peter Oborne said that the art of the film was in how it almost exclusively used the words of Israeli settlers themselves to illustrate their inhumanity and ethno-nationalist beliefs, but also criticized Theroux for some omissions, notably in not using the word apartheid. [62]
Dan Einav of the Financial Times, [63] Phil Harrison of The Independent, [54] [64] and Carol Midgley of The Times rated it 4 out of 5 stars. [65]
Reactions to the film on social media were generally positive. [66] [64] [67]
In an opinion piece published on 6 May 2025 by Mondoweiss, Mohammad Hureini, one of the Palestinians featured in The Settlers, criticized the documentary for leaving out parts they filmed where he explained his family's history dating back to the Nakba and his view of the ongoing Nakba from the final film, describing it as a "crucial part" of his story as a Palestinian. [60]
BBC’s choice was clear: to frame the situation as a present day political disagreement rather than the continuation of a decades-long campaign to displace and erase an entire people. [60]
He characterized its exclusion as "sanitiz[ing]" and "dull[ing] the impact" of Palestinians stories. He wrote,
It’s as if they wanted to show the surface of the crisis, without digging into its roots; as if they feared that exposing the full truth about settler colonialism, ethnic cleansing, and the enduring legacy of the Nakba would make viewers uncomfortable. Well, it should make them uncomfortable. [60]
In May 2025, after the film's release, Issa Amro stated in a post on Twitter that his home in Hebron was raided and robbed by Israeli soldiers and settlers in retaliation for his participation in the documentary. [68] His post included videos of settlers forcing themselves onto his property and soldiers with their faces covered by balaclavas. [69] Amro said that Israeli police told him not to file a report and threatened him with arrest. [70] Theroux retweeted Amro's post on his own Twitter page, saying that his team had been in contact with Amro since the documentary and were "monitor[ing] the situation". [69]
The pattern and process of land seizure for the purpose of constructing these Israeli colonies...
The continuous construction of Israeli colonies and bypass roads all over the Palestinian land...
Moreover in 1995 38,500 housing units were built in Jewish settlements (colonies)...
The ongoing occupation has been heavily shaped by the issues of land confiscation and the building of Israeli Jewish settlements (or what Palestinians often refer to less euphemistically as "colonies").
the Israel settlers reside almost solely in exclusively Jewish communities (one exception is a small enclave within the city of Hebron).
This is despite huge efforts by successive governments to fragment and encircle Palestinian residential areas with exclusively Jewish zones of residence – the settlements.
In the June 1967 Six Day War, Israel occupied the Golan Heights, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Sinai Peninsula. Soon after, it began to build the first settlements for Jews in those areas.
The international community has taken a critical view of both deportations and settlements as being contrary to international law. General Assembly resolutions have condemned the deportations since 1969, and have done so by overwhelming majorities in recent years. Likewise, they have consistently deplored the establishment of settlements, and have done so by overwhelming majorities throughout the period (since the end of 1976) of the rapid expansion in their numbers. The Security Council has also been critical of deportations and settlements; and other bodies have viewed them as an obstacle to peace, and illegal under international law... Although East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights have been brought directly under Israeli law, by acts that amount to annexation, both of these areas continue to be viewed by the international community as occupied, and their status as regards the applicability of international rules is in most respects identical to that of the West Bank and Gaza.
the establishment of the Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory has been considered illegal by the international community and by the majority of legal scholars.
The real controversy hovering over all the litigation on the security barrier concerns the fate of the Israeli settlements in the occupied territories. Since 1967, Israel has allowed and even encouraged its citizens to live in the new settlements established in the territories, motivated by religious and national sentiments attached to the history of the Jewish nation in the land of Israel. This policy has also been justified in terms of security interests, taking into consideration the dangerous geographic circumstances of Israel before 1967 (where Israeli areas on the Mediterranean coast were potentially threatened by Jordanian control of the West Bank ridge). The international community, for its part, has viewed this policy as patently illegal, based on the provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention that prohibit moving populations to or from territories under occupation.
It can thus clearly be concluded that the transfer of Israeli settlers into the occupied territories violates not only the laws of belligerent occupation but the Palestinian right of self-determination under international law. The question remains, however, whether this is of any practical value. In other words, given the view of the international community that the Israeli settlements are illegal under the law if belligerent occupation, what purpose does it serve to establish that an additional breach of international law has occurred?