Shimon Dotan is the writer and director of \u201cThe Settlers,\u201d which premiered Jan. 22 at the Sundance Film Festival. (Courtesy of Shimon Dotan)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
That\u2019s not to say settler extremists aren\u2019t an important subject for consideration. Though relatively small in number, they wield outsize influence on the settlement enterprise, on Israeli-Palestinian relations and on Israeli policy. Increasingly, they are a focus of worldwide attention. On Jan. 18, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Daniel Shapiro, made headlines when he warned of unchecked \u201cIsraeli vigilantism in the West Bank.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dotan\u2019s film forces us to reckon with the ugliness in the settler movement, even as he showcases the West Bank\u2019s beauty with some stunning aerial photography. His subjects are the settler from Tekoa who proudly declares himself a racist, the father who talks jovially to his young sons about beating up Arabs when they grow up, the settlers who want their enterprise eventually to swallow the Kingdom of Jordan — and maybe even all the land from the Nile River in Egypt to the Euphrates in Iraq.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday, almost 50 years after the first settler made his home in the West Bank, the settlement drive is a clear-cut success,\u201d the film’s narrator says. \u201cThe settlers see themselves as pioneers, the leaders of Israeli society. The question is: Where are they leading it — to divine redemption, as they claim, or to apartheid?\u201d<\/p>\n
Dotan, 66, who has lived in the United States for the past 20 years and teaches political cinema at New York University, approaches his subject chronologically. He starts with the leaders of Gush Emunim, the ideological movement that, influenced by the teachings of Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook, believed that the 1967 war heralded divine redemption and that settling the newly conquered territory would help usher in the messianic age.<\/p>\n
The film intersperses interviews with the movement’s aging leaders with archival footage of those leaders as young men, leading demonstrations, establishing new West Bank outposts, celebrating with followers. Where there\u2019s no footage, Dotan relies on illustrations and voice-overs to tell crucial parts of the story. The beautiful illustrations are the work of artist David Polonsky, who did the animation for \u201cWaltz with Bashir,\u201d the Oscar-nominated 2009 Israeli film about the Lebanon War.<\/p>\n
The result is a fascinating look at how the settlements came into being, and the men and women on the movement\u2019s fringe who continue to push its boundaries \u2013 both ideologically and physically. \u201cThe Settlers\u201d also documents how the Israeli government — sometimes willingly, sometimes unwillingly and often unwittingly and without foresight \u2013 helped build and reinforce the settlement enterprise.<\/p>\n
In one scene, Sarah Nachshon, who played a seminal role in establishing the Jewish settlement in Hebron, recalls how she forced the reopening of the old Jewish cemetery at a time when it wasn\u2019t clear Israel would allow Jews to remain in the city. In was the mid-1970s, and her infant son had just died in his crib. She insisted on burying him in Hebron, though no Jew had been buried there since before Israel\u2019s establishment.<\/p>\n
When Israeli officials refused, Nachshon simply ignored their orders, marching past Israeli soldiers with her dead baby in her arms. Once the baby was interred, the cemetery became another site Israeli soldiers were compelled to patrol \u2013 another active Jewish outpost in the West Bank.<\/p>\n
The film features interviews with unrepentant members of the Jewish Underground, who in the 1980s carried out bombing attacks against the Palestinian mayors of Nablus, Ramallah and El Bireh (two were maimed, one escaped unharmed), plotted to blow up the mosque at the Temple Mount and planted bombs on Arab buses. Israeli officials caught them and defused the bombs before they exploded.<\/p>\n
We see undated scenes of Jews beating Arabs in their fields with crowbars, Jews beating Arabs in the streets of Hebron, a Jew explaining how in the Jewish tradition, \u201cRevenge is an important thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Palestinian violence against Israelis goes almost unmentioned, except for a few oblique references. In Dotan\u2019s film, the only Palestinians we see are victims. Palestinian violence is \u201cirrelevant\u201d to this story, Dotan said.<\/p>\n
Dotan says his primary target for this film is Israelis, among whom he hopes the movie will spark conversation. Dotan is still looking for an American distributor for the film.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think Israelis know very little about what\u2019s happening in the West Bank and little about the ideological origins of the settlements,\u201d Dotan said. \u201cThis film gives settlers\u2019 voices a platform. I hope people will listen.\u201d<\/p>\n
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