ITV documentary 'Our Land' lays bare the fanaticism of the Israeli settler movement
An Israeli settler polishes his gun. “The Palestinian savages around here, they have no mercy, no law, nothing,” he says coolly. “Just blood and blood, like you see in the movies."
The settler, introduced to television viewers as Yair, has a beard and a ponytail, and speaks fluent English.
He is one of the most prominent figures featured in ITV’s brilliant new documentary, Our Land.
Made by BAFTA-winning filmmaker Jordan Bryon and produced by Hardcash Productions, it was filmed across eight months last year in the occupied West Bank.
A rarity on British television, it provides up-close insight into the sensibilities and motivations of the Israeli settler movement.
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Some may argue it is irresponsible to give these violent settlers a platform.
But the film contextualises what it depicts. Israeli settlements in the West Bank, text at the start of the documentary informs us, are legal under Israeli law but illegal under international law.
The film documents not just settlers but everyday resistance by Palestinians they are besieged and attacked.
It also shows how settler violence, far from being a fringe phenomenon, is backed by the Israeli military and through official policy.
The footage lays bare in vivid detail the extraordinary fanaticism of the settlers themselves.
'Everything is Jewish land'
We are shown Yair visiting a hilltop that overlooks Nahalin, a Palestinian village. The hill has an Israeli flag planted on it.
He plans to set up a new outpost here, he proudly tells the camera: it will be illegal under Israeli law at first, but will ultimately form the basis of a new settlement.
Yair and some settler friends enter a former Palestinian home. The family has been expelled. They walk around laughing. “That’s the kitchen,” one points out gleefully. “That’s the living room.”
The settlers refer to Palestinians as “enemies”.
“Hopefully they are going to understand that if they stay enemies, either they’ll be dead or they'll be out of here,” Yair says.
“Thirteen years ago you couldn’t drive [through] this area without meeting a lot of Arabs. Thank God, today everything is Jewish land.”
Then he utter the two words that make up the film’s title.
“The Bible is proof that it’s our land, since 3,500 years ago,” Yair declares.
The phrase “our land” is also used by Layla, a Palestinian woman who lives with her family of 15 on a farm near Avigayil, an Israeli settlement.
Their house is besieged on all sides by settlers, and they can’t go a hundred metres in any direction without being at risk of an attack.
Their home is regularly robbed. We see footage of the family car being set on fire by settlers.
“This is our land and we’ll stay here,” Layla declares in Arabic. “We won’t give up. However they pressure us we’ll be patient because this is our land.”
After the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023, Layla notes, the settler attacks ramped up. If not for the attack, she suggests, things might have been better.
Another member of the family dissents. “Whether Hamas started it or not, Israel would have started it on us,” he argues.
'The Israelis are cowards. Only their weapons make them stronger than Palestinians'
- Layla, Palestinian living in the occupied-West Bank
In a particularly chilling scene, we see four settlers - all young men - march up to Layla’s house.
“Give me a coffee,” one of them says. They have the confident swagger that comes with a sense of complete impunity and power. They lounge on a sofa outside the house and light cigarettes.
A young woman, Layla’s daughter Farah, emerges from the house and kicks them out. “Get lost!” she shouts, brandishing a camera. They sullenly walk away as she films them.
“In the end she became stronger than me,” says Layla proudly of her daughter.
“The Israelis are cowards. Only their weapons make them stronger than Palestinians.”
Victim and victor
The film takes us to Tulkarem refugee camp in the northern part of the occupied West Bank just after a deadly Israeli military raid.
Abdallah, a paramedic with the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, explains what has happened.
The army have bulldozed a woman’s house - no one seems to know why. Two Palestinians were killed in an airstrike during the raid, and another died when a building collapsed on him.
“Do you see it’s like Gaza, or no?” Abdallah laughs bitterly. The Israeli assault on Gaza looms large on everyone’s minds throughout the film.
Yair is asked about the death toll there - at the time, 45,000 were confirmed dead. "I feel more secure after 45,000 terrorists died," he says. "I don’t believe in innocent people in Gaza."
The settler is pushed on his genocidal attitude. What about the children?
He scoffs. “What do you mean children?” Palestinian children learn hatred from when they are babies, he insists. “Kill the Jews and you’ll go to heaven.” Why should Israel allow them to grow up so they can kill Israelis?
In his mind, this is a simple and coherent argument. It is also a genocidal one.
Yair’s words combine an awareness of his extreme power, which is rooted in reality, given his ability to run wild on Palestinian territory with military protection, with a sense of grievance that seems out of place.
He is at once victim and victor in his own head.
“I don’t know such a thing called settler violence,” Yair tells us. “We have many enemies around us, and that’s why I keep my gun.”
He turns his rage onto Europeans who criticise Israel’s actions. “For 2,000 years you killed us. All you guys, all the time, killed my people.
“Who do you think you are, you can talk to me about how I am dealing with my enemy? How can you dare even talk to me about violence or about killing innocent people?
“It’s only because what Hitler started, you want to finish.”
Radical settlers backed by ministers
The film also features Daniella Weiss, a prominent settler leader campaigning for the settlement of Israelis in Gaza.
She describes Palestinian land currently occupied by Israel as “the present we got from God”.
“We do as civilians a parallel job to what the army do as army,” she says in broken English.
In De’eri, two miles from Gaza, Weiss speaks at an event advocating for the resettlement of Gaza by Israelis.
One of the great strengths of the ITV film is its demonstration that the settlers it features are not extreme figures in Israeli society.
Senior members of the Israeli government attend the event, including the then-security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir. He praises a beaming Weiss and is later seen dancing with other Israelis.
'We do as civilians a parallel job to what the army do as army'
- Daniella Weiss, settler activist
At a Petah Tikvah event in Israel, we see volunteers for the movement hand out pamphlets that read, “Come build your house in Gaza”.
One Israeli woman is invited to mark on a map of Gaza where she wants her house to be.
What do you do with the women and children that live there?” she asks incredulously.
“They’re not there anymore,” a volunteer explains patiently.
“What do you do with their houses?”
“They’re destroyed.”
Another strength of this film is its exploration of different Israeli perspectives. We are introduced to Yasmin, a young Israeli woman who refused compulsory military service and has spent nine years documenting violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
She often gives video footage she captures to defence lawyers when Palestinians are arrested.
Yasmin says she herself has been attacked more than thirty times. We see a raging settler throw a stone at her car, smashing its window.
She notes that while the settlers will attack her, unlike with Palestinians they won’t shoot her.
With Yasmin we watch settlers launching unprovoked violent attacks on Palestinians, accompanied by armed soldiers who point their guns at the victims to deter them from fighting back.
Yasmin is good friends with Layla and visits her home often. She is clearly popular with the family.
But she also reveals her mental anguish at living in the occupied territories.
“It’s just crazy to choose to be Israeli, and to choose to stay here if I have the option not to be here,” she reflects, adding that she feels she has “blood on her hands”.
“I’m living on Palestinian land, I’m white Jewish. I’m doing Zionism even if I’m not Zionist.”
Israeli police allowed 180 settlers to pray inside Al-Aqsa Mosque complex, a move condemned by Palestinians as a serious breach of the status quo. pic.twitter.com/C7f6rDRVwV
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These rounded portrayals make Our Land a brilliant film, and particularly significant because it has been broadcast by a mainstream news channel.
It explores a range and depth of perspectives and experiences that are rarely explored in the mainstream British media.
The views expressed by settlers like Yair are a far cry from the talking points regularly spouted by Israeli government spokespeople every week on British television but are in keeping with the reality that Palestinians have to live as routine.
Since January, after the documentary was made, Israel launched Operation Iron Wall, which the UN says has seen at least 40,000 Palestinians forced from their homes.
A message at the end of the film tells us that Yair and his team remain at their illegal outpost to this day.
Layla and her family are still in their house. "They’re suffocating us,” Layla says at one point in the film. “They’re a pressure on our chest.” But she resolves not to be forced out of her home.
“If we leave the house everything will be gone… we decided to stay here holding onto each other until it’s resolved,” she says.
“This is our land.”
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