by PAUL BOND
This is Theroux’s second documentary on the ultra-nationalist settlers. In 2011, making The Ultra Zionists, he described them as being “on the fringe of a fringe in terms of their outlook and beliefs,” while enjoying “a degree of support from the Israeli state.”
That year, the Netanyahu government faced mounting protests across the whole of Israeli society against economic conditions. Conscious of the Arab Spring, the government approved thousands of settlements on occupied Palestinian land to offset this protest movement.
Today, fascist settler parties are in government and are playing a determining role in Benjamin Netanyahu’s murderous regime. The settlers provide an essential social base for militarism and social reaction.
Theroux’s documentary, though focused on the West Bank, also showed the ethnic cleansing colonialist programme for Gaza. Daniella Weiss, the far-right “godmother” of the settler movement, boasted of having 800 families ready to move into Gaza, saying, “Our mission is to settle Israel.”
She shows Theroux a map of the “Greater Israel” she means, encompassing Lebanon, Jordan, and parts of Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Palestinians in this region should leave and go to other countries, she declares. When Theroux says that not thinking about other people at all seems “sociopathic,” she laughs. “This is normal,” she insists.
This is the real policy of Zionism. In Nablus, in the occupied West Bank, Theroux is asked by an Israeli soldier, “How long are you going to be in Israel?”
Texas-born settler Ari Abramowitz carries his gun at all times, including in the synagogue. He calls the Bible “a land deed to the West Bank.” Showing Theroux around, he insisted that the Palestinian people “don’t exist”.
At one point we see Weiss’s car break from an escorted convoy of settlers and rabbis and head towards Gaza. Her gesture, she said, was to show the accompanying rabbis that Gaza is not “beyond reach.” One rabbi, Dov Lior, is shown calling for Palestinian “savages” and “camel-riders” to be “cleansed.”
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