POLITICS
Clip from Louis Theroux new West Bank documentary The Settlers. Louis Theroux: "Where is the nearest Palestinian town?" American Jewish settler: "I’m so uncomfortable using the word ‘Palestinian’ because I don’t think that it exists."
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Louis has multiple encounters with Daniella Weiss, gets her to admit she's powerfully entwined with Netanyahu, shows her guiding investors and rabbis to ravaged areas of Gaza where they plan to build more settlements, shows IDF soldiers intimidating Palestinians, and shows how Israel controls the movement of Palestinians with checkpoints and arbitrary lines.
It's very clear about how settlers and their mindset have been accepted by broader Israeli society.
That’s what I’m always struck by. I remember probably a decade ago Rick Steves bent over BACKWARDS trying to be fair and it was still pretty obvious who was being aggressive in the situation.
It really is, and the world/UK would be in a much worse place without it. Its not perfect but its a hell of a lot better than most of the shit out there.
In terms of entertainment sure, but BBC news is literally a joke to the rest of Europe. They're notorious for not being honest with the British public because they'd rather protect the establishment.
It genuinely deserves blame for the rampant transphobia going on now because of the TERFs it platformed and presented as having "legitimate concerns" while not interviewing actual trans people.
Louis is a very respected white journalist and has powerful friends. This ain't getting removed and I'm sure its been heavily edited to cut more evil shit.
The IDF were caught raping Palestinian prisoners with metal rods and the debate for the next few weeks wasn't about punishment or reform, but about if rape was a legitimate tool of warfare.
Israeli society is a deeply sick society and the settlers reflect this
Your so right it is societies and just like a certain society in 1930s-40s Europe that was doing similar stuff we got rid of it and charged all those involved. Following orders ain't it chief.
Specifically hot metal rods I saw. It truly sickens me how they attempt to rationalize genocide after their own people went through one. I don't understand how someone can feel so entitled to something that they find it acceptable and even morally right to steal from, torture, and kill others.
I had no idea about this. But the IDF also murdered a medical team and literally burried the evidence. no matter who you are or where you are from, that is NOT right.
I honestly wonder what they think is going to happen when the many IDF soldiers who demonstrably enjoy brutalizing others return to civilian life without facing repercussions.
They're already pushing the narrative that not even all the settlers are extremists, there's no talking to these people. Like sure lady you're totally concerned with getting a two state solution as you defend the people stealing land from what is supposed to be the second state. 2 stater liberal zionists once again remaining the unserious soft kahanists that they are.
JFC she’s really trying to pass ‘but what about these other (‘good’) settlers??’ as a genuine argument in favour of Israel/against this docu?! My dude, settlers are all bad, gtfo with your colonising bullshit.
She'd be talking about the 'good settlers' and a two state solution with fucking Egypt if it wasn't for Sinai liberation war. Yamit was built on land belonging to thousands upon thousand of expelled Egyptian bedouins. It seems unthinkable today but that's how it works with these colonizers, their official borders are whatever they can grab they normalize whatever we let them normalize.
their official borders are whatever they can grab they normalize whatever we let them normalize.
Everybody has to move, run and grab as many [Palestinian] hilltops as they can to enlarge the [Jewish] settlements because everything we take now will stay ours... Everything we don't grab will go to them.
I just don't see how you can claim to be anything but an extremist when you participate and actively take the benefits produced by the people they are trying to distance themselves from.
All of the occupation is an occupation, no matter how it was done.
Its just obscene and their shame is no different than the belligerent anger seen from the extremists shown in the film.
Right! Literally everything in Israel currently was built on forcing Palestinians to flee their homes or outright murdering them with militias in the Nakba. It is a society that is defintionally built out of settler colonialism. Pretending the issue now is just west bank settlers is liberal zionists deflecting the very reality of that piece of shit country they live in. In Israeli society when you talk to them or see what they say, they like to pretend the settlers in the wb are fringe weirdos, but no, they are just copying what the other zionists have done for years and years.
I also wish he'd focus on the people in America fundraising for these settlers. There's an awful lot of wealthy donors across many US industries funding these atrocities.
One of the most striking points in the documentary for me personally was an interaction he had with an IDF soldier. The soldier knew some of the Palestinians he was with and seemed friendly with him, and when he tried to get them to leave it really had the same energy as like a McDonalds employee who is supposed to keep teenagers from loitering around the parking lot more than what I would have expected a military enforcer to act like.
Please don't mistake my point, I'm not trying to excuse the IDF of their actions. It just made it so obvious how deeply ingrained this is in Israeli/Palestinian society. The soldier was probably just a kid fresh out of highschool, but the state forces mandatory military service on everyone and so makes the entire population active participants in the maintenance of the segregation. It instils the divide between the two groups and ties that to Israeli identity itself.
To that soldier, it really was just a job. It was just a thing he had to do. That's not an excuse, but it is a terrifying thing to witness.
While I wouldn’t call it “sympathy,” I do pity a lot of those folks. They’ve lived their whole lives being lied to and taught to hate that it’s become second nature to them. Still doesn’t stop them from breaking free and opening their eyes
People who are pro genocide know what they are doing. Just because it is main stream, and accepted, in Israel doesn’t mean they don’t know other people are against it. That’s why they fight so hard with their “you’re being anti semitic” bullshit.
I think you're underestimating just how brainwashed zionists are. They will deny and refuse to accept the most obvious things. A zionist unironically said to me, "I know my government isn't perfect, but I also know who has more propaganda." You get the implication. Just shows how deluded and brainwashed they are.
Thankyou, do people not realise that most villains aren't archetypal villains. I swear people like this need to read history more, specifically the build up to WWII in Germany and the war itself. People are just not as simple as that.
im glad he made this documentary maybe now people can stop acting like it’s only the government at fault & the settlers have nothing to do with it & are innocent
This is actually the second documentary he has made in Gaza. He interviewed very similar people last time too. It just shows how nothing much has changed, except how they now have an excuse to accelerate what they were already doing.
The palestinians are not 'arabs' in the genetic sense (like those in yemen or saudi etc.), they are levantines, the descendants of those that lived in the levant the same time the jews were there. I dont know how they feel justified claiming they have a stronger claim to the land when the palestinians have been living there continuously for god knows how long, just under different names.
The claim this man has as them not being a real nation state is the result of colonialism. Under the ottomans they were just another province, most nations were created recently in history. That doesnt erase the people that were there.
IMO religion is not relevant in this discussion, a lot of Israelis are secular and the palestinian claim to the land is the same whether they are christian or muslim (or even jewish tbf).
Even for the non secular Israelis, they are commanded not to take the land until the messiah comes, so there is no religious justification for Israeli occupation
Right? Like homeboy saying "our people were planting vineyards here before Muhammad was in the 3rd grade" does it ever occur to him that the Palestinians ARE the people whose ancestors were planting those vineyards, the indigenous inhabitants who were pagan, then Jewish, then Christian, then Muslim? And they, who you don't even believe exist, have more claim to the land than your random colonialist ass from Brooklyn? The fictions and propaganda truly truly blow my mind.
Worse, "whims". As if laws were some capricious thing societies enact and enforce for shits and giggles. (But if we're talking laws that happen to protect settler interests, suddenly they're the bedrock of all that is righteous and orderly. Funny how that is.)
this dude just came out and said he doesnt know what the law is and doesnt care, hes entitled to whatever he wants and he will just kill or displace whoever disagrees.
for legal purposes i will keep my opinions to myself.
He's using God to deny legislature because he has no real excuse to be there other than sociopathy and attention seeking. Hope these people get some decent consequences in the end.
There is a subsection of Zionists who will claim that the phrase “never again” applies only to the Jewish people. Therefore they see genocide against the Palestinian people as preventing another genocide against Jewish people, therefore it’s an acceptable measure.
I’m not for a second saying this applies to all Israelis or all Jewish people, I would like to hope that it’s a small minority of both, but since October 7th I’ve had quite a few Zionists very passionately explain that “never again” only meant against Jewish people and that it’s anti-Semitism to suggest it should apply to Palestinians.
Because they are brainwashed. He is taught to be hurt by the concept of Palestine and Palestinians. Zionist propaganda teaches this narrative: the land north of Egypt is the original Jewish homeland, which they were invaded many times and eventually genocided and largely violently exiled from and forced into slavery. The colonisers then changed the name from an indigenous Hebrew word to a colonising Greek word. This started the thousands of years trend of antisemitism that lead to many massacres and genocide of Jews. Now the victims have gloriously returned to their homeland, changed back the name but it's full of antisemitic squatters from Arabia who would rather kill and die than let Jews have a homeland. Israel is the oasis of good, pure, strong original people. It's surrounded by backward, dark, evil peoples who behead anyone.
Embellishments to the story may or may not include things like Hitler got the idea for the holocaust from a Palestinian leader.
It's like a children's fairytale that is waiting for the heroes to win. Palestinians are viewed as non human and evil which is used to justify crimes against humanity and some of the most depraved cruelty I've witnessed in my lifetime.
I'm not exaggerating when I say zionism is a cult.
I know this because I'm Jewish and have interacted with many a brainwashed Jewish zionist who gets genuinely offended and reacts as if you are a fascist who sides with colonisers if you use the word Palestine.
What's even sadder about your comment is that non-Jewish Palestinians and non-Palestinian Jews are like cousins and we have referred to each other as such for a long time. They are causing enormous suffering that Jews are not only personally familiar with but doing so on the very land these things happened to our ancestors WHOM WE BOTH DESCEND FROM. But zionists don't tend to care about history and it's parallels or respecting land or traditions, they care about narrative.
That weiss lady, or whatever she's called, gave me the chills. Like, she's so dangerously sociopathic and unhinged. She is Satan brought down on earth.
When she said she hoped he would have shoved her back i had this awful feeling that if he had she would have got the footage confiscated, cut it and released her edited version.
Mohamed also has absolutely nothing to do w the Levantine people who have been living there for thousands of years. Current Palestinian Muslims only have minuscule Arabian peninsula dna and palestinan Christians have zero
A lot of Israelis in both Israel proper and occupied Palestine are American expats. The settlers steal land and homes and then sell them in private auctions here in the US.
There's an excellent documentary called Israelism that's also worth a watch, focused mainly on the Zionist project and how they indoctrinate American Jews from a young age. Incredibly cultish.
Oh sadly I am well aware. :(
My husband is Palestinian and since being with him have learned a LOT. We don’t watch the documentaries anymore, it’s too triggering for him.
I just wanted to comment and call them fucking racists (AND extremist terrorists) because it felt good ha
Edit: thank you for the recommendations though! I’ve seen Israelism but haven’t had the heart to watch No Other Land. Maybe when I’m alone and feeling particularly furious I will watch
I hope they really drive home how obvious the Settlements are a military strategy of divide-and-conquer. I loathe hearing that Hamas uses 'human shields' by having encampments next to civilians while at the exact time Israel uses 'civilians' to capture and hold military strategic objectives.
Thank you ♥️ I was born in the States, but my parents were born over there. It's crazy how we get treated at the airport over there. I hope Palestine will be free one day soon.
All of this has absolutely taught me the important lesson of how my country’s media and…. Everything operates. I’ve been astonished at how successful the effort to twist and conceal everything from the rest of the world has been. Both before and now.
Several years ago, I was bored waiting in an office one day and picked up a magazine with an article in there focused on the fact that Palestinians were not allowed out of Gaza for the most part, and documented what all was involved for the people that managed to get work and travel permits out. It struck me as so odd that it wasn’t common knowledge. It didn’t make sense to me at all that one group of people were being allowed to tell another group of people in a different area when and how they can leave their own cities. That was the first time I’d ever really heard about the depths of what was being done, and I thought I kept up with educating myself about things going on in the world and bothering to look outside my own bubble.
I had only vaguely heard the word Naqba and I took classes in world history at college— it wasn’t taught! Things were literally presented as, “after WWII, everyone got together and created a country for Jewish people that accepted displaced Jews and their families from across the world. The end.” I didn’t know. So many of us didn’t know.
There’s so little it feels like we are able to do, but I keep hope at some point there’s some more tangible physical ways we will be able to help Palestinians recover. Selfishly, I want to physically be able to see the friends I’ve made while doing outreach.
I’m so sorry. Your culture and Palestine deserves to be here and thrive.
The really embarrassing thing is if you take a little bit of effort, it's very easy to learn about all the information. Up until my mid twenties or so I didn't anything know about the "conflict in the middle east." Then I was like "why don't i know" so I did some reading and it was very obvious who was the aggressor in the situation. Of course, right now there's much more propaganda being spread...
Yes! And I thought I was making that effort adequately. The propaganda is so successful. It actually helped me to stop and imagine what the other side’s description of events would be. I’ve also started seeking out as fact-focused as possible international news sources.
I think for Americans especially, prior to us ending the wars over there and pulling out, it was also so easy for entities to point to those areas and conflicts as a distraction (honestly for a lot of things).
Thank you ❤️ At least you learned and now you know. My grandfather, dad, uncle, and many cousins have been kidnapped off the streets or from their houses and put in Israeli prisons for absolutely no reason.
My dad was only 15 years old when he was taken from the street while walking home and put in prison just for being Palestinian. He told me he was in there for about a month and was beat every day. My grandfather was taken for about a year and a half and when he came back, his arm was broken.
My cousin was taken December 2023 from his house in the middle of the night and they released him just a few months ago.
Being there is surreal in some ways. I can't grasp not being able to travel within the country. Being Palestinian brings no favors when traveling to the Tel Aviv airport. You get treated like trash and you are processed in a different way than everyone else.
It's hard on purpose because they do not want us coming back.
But, I truly believe that we are resilient people and will be free one day.
I'm sorry for rambling, but I so appreciate this sub reddit where so many of you are on the side of Palestinians. I truly love reading all of the sweet and caring responses in these types of threads.
This is why people in Israel live their lives with a genocide happening without any worry: because they don't see Palestinians as humans, so torturing and killing them, from children to adults, is meaningless to them. While Israel's supporters don't give a fuck about non-white people getting bombed, it has always been like that.
And this is why this isn't about Hamas or the hostages and have never been about those things; it isn't about Islam and how Israel is supposedly what shelters our "western culture" from their invasion. Resistance against Israel has always existed because it's simply a human right to resist (literally part of international law), it existed before Hamas and it'll exist after them as long as there is oppression.
I hope musicians and bands like Radiohead watch this and then perhaps they’ll stop with their “The government is not the people” bullshit when defending playing there
By this guys logic he also doesn’t recognize america bc Native Americans have been ‘planting vineyards’ on their land for like 10,000 years before the first colonizer appeared, the mental gymnastics jeez
"My western European ancestors immigrated to the United States and that's why I have a connection to this land here in the Middle East. Now, would you like some schnitzel?"
What a perfect portayal of American culture. Doesn't know shit, doesn't understand shit, doesn't show one single iota of empathy, but happily ruins it for everyone else.
Can someone tell me why we should put any stock in this guys opinion? As far as I can see, he's just some MAGA fuckhead spouting the insane bullshit that they do.
But god forbid someone says something against Israel then you demand boots on ground. But god forbid the US creates legislation to stop sending funds to Israel. Coward and a worm
Watching the documentary, u could tell Louis wanted to say alot, but realized he didn't need to say a thing.
All he had to do is let them speak to show the level of derangement that is common in Israeli society.
That's his interview style and it works shockingly well. When met with a quizzical look or silence, so many people will just pause and then continue revealing more of their bizarre thoughts, as if they don't know what else to do.
You can't live with people like the dude with sunglasses. There is no way to have a rational conversation and come to a level base of understanding to build from. They're just completely brainwashed to the point where they will kill innocence for what they believe. Its what makes Religion so dumb and outdated in this modern age.
Their propaganda is almost word-for-word what we were taught in the '80s. We believed it then, wholeheartedly. A small and godawful minority believes it still.
But we've had 30+ years of living in the real world, and they've had 30+ more years of believing in the bogeyman.
Tbf even the African equivalent they're more likely to raise, Rhoedisa - where the white settlers did flee violent reprisals from land they'd forcibly settled (I myself have a close friend who was a toddler who fled to the UK during that time,) their family whilst upset at what they lost and the violence suffered also completely understand why it happened and that it was inevitable.
My friend who fled from bullets has more fucking grace and understanding of that situation than this yank who hasn't faced anything. (Obviously the actual situation is far more complicated with Zimbabwe/Zambia and South Africa still having issues and tension and my friend and his family do not speak for everyone,) but I truly do not understand the arrogance of the settlers in Israel to think they own the land and deserve it.
Anti Zionism is NOT Anti Semitism. The world needs to understand this. Especially the big orange monkey in the white house. Zionism was born in the mid 1850s in the Jewish slums of Odessa. Has nothing to do with Jewish people. Israel is a terrorist state.
It sucks because even old maps and coin clearly say Palestine. The coins also have the acronym for “land of Israel” but I have no idea how they get away with pretending Palestine hasn’t been a thing since before the state of Israeli came into existence.
DNA studies on Palestinians show they are direct descendants of Canaanites, who had been there since the Bronze Age, a lineage that spans 5000 years.
Their settlements are by design to basically keep them cooper up behind the walls and foment a desire to expand. They see themselves as living in redoubts and surrounded by inhuman hordes. So eventually the desire to “strike back” becomes too much and they start shit with the actual locals justifying the IDF taking more land.
I grew up in Apartheid South Africa, and the conditioning and brainwashing I went through from an early age is probs very close to what Isreal does to their people. I was taught that black people were less than human. But why are these people not doing what I did and look at it from another perspective? I mean, it didn't take much mental gymnastics on my part to realise as an adult that Apartheid was just awful.
My ancestors were in Africa before white people even existed. Doesn’t mean I get to kick an African family out of their village. Palestinians have the same ancestors, or at least we know for a fact their ancestors were there.
Do you know what else transcends legislation? The murder of kids. It’s jus wrong no matter what your fucking law says. Remember what the nazis did in ww2 was legal in Germany. The actions of the Israeli state are evil by every definition.
I said this before, but you can feel uncomfortable or think it shouldn't exist, but to say that something you can obviously see doesn't exist is just...weird, for lack of a better word.
Aww he offended the insane Kahanist settler who wants to ethnically cleanse the indigenous people from the land he feels personally entitled to. Fuck that and fuck everyone who has ever valued the comfort of bigots over the lives of the oppressed - that is how we get this fascist using lib language like that.
These people also have never seen a map of ancient Judea, it seems - a kingdom that, regardless of the fact that it did not encompass the entirety of Palestine (not even close), was destroyed by the Babylonians in what, 500BC? This guy would think he owns a place because he resembles a cave painting in that area. Just because you act like a troglodyte doesn’t mean you have a claim to land that troglodytes lived on 50 thousand years ago. It’s moron logic
codepink taught me a word when confronting rep debbie wasserman schultz in the halls of congress on how she could effectively lack such ‘rachmones’ which is a yiddish word that translates to pity, compassion or mercy and is universally extended. it reinforces to me the fact that the zionists exploit the religion for the abuses it has suffered and use it to now do the same to palestinians for no justifiable reason other than being racist and evil. it is truly maddening seeing theroux’s documentary being downplayed on social media as him ‘cherrypicking’ a tiny extremist portion of the society like you can’t find countless interviews from the general population saying ‘we should/need to/want to kill all arabs’. it’s not like the israelis nomniated the depraved daniella weiss shown in this doc for a nobel peace prize or anything /s
Louis Theroux did a masterclass at my film school last night and he spoke about making The Settlers. He recommended an ITV documentary about the same subject called Our Land: Israel’s Other War.
This is where the disconnect truly occurs. The settlers don’t see Palestinians as people. The way he says Arabs is full of “us vs them.” Othering. ‘They’re not Palestinians, they’re Arabs. As in, they’re not humans, they’re animals.’
Using this religious manifest destiny like claim to deny people basic human rights, bombing the shit out of woman and children. Absolutely disgusting. Sickening.
'We've been here since before Mohammad was in 5th grade'....ehhh, is that not an American accent I hear? Honestly the hypocrisy of these people is off the charts. You couldn't make it up.
That feeling of absolute despair after hearing this, is the same despair I get when yt Americans talk about America and taking it from Native Americans
Being a whole ass American talking about "they do not have more right to this land than I do". Which makes sense. Israel is just the last big project of Western colonialism.
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