The Land of the Settlers

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The Land of the Settlers
Chaim Yavin
Running time120 min. several parts
Original release
Release30 May 2005 (2005-05-30)

The Land of the Settlers is a five-part

anchorman
. It ran instead on Channel 2, creating a stir for its sympathy towards Palestinians.

Summary

"The message of the series was," Yavin explains, "If we want peace, we have to dismantle the settlements."[2]

In Part 1, Yavin travels through the

checkpoint
complain to the camera that the four-hour wait they're enduring in the hot sun is common, while an Israel mother rants, "I think Jews that vote to evacuate us from our homes should come and talk to us. If they looked us in the eyes before they did, I think I’d feel differently."

PART 2 focuses on

Second World War. There, Yavin films a concrete wall where someone wrote in spraypaint, "Arabs to the crematorium
." There's hate on both sides, but Yavin's documentary asks to what extent have the oppressed become the oppressors.

Part 2 highlights the suffering of mothers on both sides of the conflict. If they haven't experienced the heartbreak of losing a child, they worry constantly about their children's safety. Yavin speaks to a weepy Palestinian woman in Hebron whose still mourning the loss of her fourteen-year-old girl. The smiling, lanky girl was shot by rioting settlers and fell off her roof. An Israeli mother shares the similarly disturbing story of watching her seven-year-old son run up to her covered in blood after having been shot by a sniper. But instead of channeling their sorrow and pain to try to change the failing system of hate, their experiences have filled them with loathing for their enemies that perpetuates the conflict. For example, an Israeli mother argues, as she bobs her baby on her lap, that the Arabs should be bombed indiscriminately to insure her children's safety.

PART 3 follows the Israeli government's construction of the

security fence—Palestinians call it proof of a system of Israeli apartheid
. This documentary begins with an interview of an Israeli woman whose husband and two sons were murdered by a suicide bomber. She tells the story from her balcony, from where she can see the restaurant in which it happened. When Yavin asks her opinion of the fence, she says her heart "curdles." "Why wasn't it built earlier? Why did I have to pay such a dear price so that we could wise up later?"

Part 3 raises the question as to whether the fence is in fact being built for security purposes or if it has political motives. Instead of running along the

Berlin wall
.

Yavin, also known as Mr. Television,[1] has been reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for decades, but, until the release of this series, he's kept his political opinions to himself. These films were made with his hope to inspire moral change in his countrymen. "I cannot really do anything to relieve this misery other than to document it," Yavin says, "so that neither I nor those like me will be able to say that we saw nothing, heard nothing, knew nothing."

Reception

  • New York Times
     described it as "pessimistic, angry and highly personal."
  • Lewis Roth with Americans for Peace Now said, "has had an impact in Israel because of what you see on the screen, but also because of who made it. Chaim Yavin has been Israel's lead newscaster, and probably one of the best-known voices and faces in the Jewish community."[3]
  • Ha'aretz (5/27/05) wrote, "For two and half years, Yavin wandered the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with a small hand-held camera, which he operated himself, without a technical crew. Here and there he was reviled as the representative of the hostile leftist media, but in general the settlers spoke to him on the assumption that he was their man, and justly so: Until now he was everyone's man."[3]
  • Raanan Shaked of Yedioth Ahronoth (6/1/05), wrote, "After watching The Land of the Settlers, every caring Israeli, every humane Israeli, should get up next Saturday, go to the settlement nearest to his place of residence, and drag its inhabitants, kicking and screaming, across the road to the side of sanity.[3]
  • Assaf Schneider of
    Mohammed will make us all coffee.' The feeling is harsh: After all, it is true that 'we are brothers,' and the Israeli governments over the generations did indeed send them…" [3]

See also

Other documentaries about Israel:

Notes

  1. ^ a b Ferguson, Barbara (January 16, 2006). "Chaim Yavin: Israel's Mr. Television Shocks With 'Land of the Settlers'". Arab News.
  2. ^ Yavin, Chaim (September 24, 2005). "What Israel Must Do". The Boston Globe.
  3. ^ a b c d "Explosive Israel Documentary Series". Americans for Peace Now. Archived from the original on 2007-06-08. Retrieved 2007-06-23.

External links

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