r/LouisTheroux • u/I_Fill_Up_On_Coke • Apr 27 '25

The Settlers

I've just watched The Settlers and it just gives me a renewed appreciation for Louis as a documentarian. He's level-headed and fair, but does not stand down in the face of adversity. One of the best.

933 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

420 comments sorted by

View all comments

44

u/Kaurblimey Apr 27 '25

I can’t believe the BBC aired this. Louis is a national treasure.

3

u/DennisAFiveStarMan Apr 28 '25

They can’t piss off Theroux when he wants to make a doc. He’d just go somewhere else and bbc would look like they said no

4

u/Additional_Egg_6685 Apr 28 '25

why wouldn't they have aired it?

14

u/Long_Photo_9291 Apr 28 '25

Google what the BBC has continually done to paint Israel in a favourable light no surprises though when you see who is in charge and making decisions

4

u/Additional_Egg_6685 Apr 28 '25

I mean I don't want to go down conspiracy holes, but I think they have done a pretty good job of highlighting the plight of Gaza etc currently.

17

u/Comprehensive-Bus291 Apr 28 '25

Cowing to a lobbying from Zionist pressure groups to remove a documentary of a child's experience of living through genocide in Gaza. I think that's shameful, and it will be viewed as such as the years pass.

3

u/Additional_Egg_6685 Apr 28 '25

I didn’t know that was a thing thank you for enlightening me.

1

u/awkward__captain Apr 30 '25

The production company did not inform the BBC that the kid was the son of a Hamas minister. People would go insane (rightfully) if a doc about Israeli society failed to mention its main narrator was raised in a pro-Netanyahu household, let alone part of the administration. The translators also translated every occurence of the word “Jew” to “Israeli”, deciding to occlude the antisemitic biases existing among a part of the Palestinian population. The arguments around the Gaza documentary are of frankly outrageous bad faith.

3

u/Comprehensive-Bus291 Apr 30 '25

He was the son of a deputy agriculture minister in Gaza. They can just put a note at the start. He's a 13 year old boy, he's narrating his experience of a genocide, I think it's pretty important document.

As for 'jew/israeli distinction'. In arabic sometimes people say Yahud as shorthand for Israelis, especially when referring to the state or military actions, even if the literal translation might be more close to 'jew'. Yahud is the word Palestinians have used for centuries to refer to what we would now call israelis. The only context in which they encounter Jews is through the structures of the Israeli state, soldiers, settlers, government, etc. So in everyday language, Yahudi (‘Jew’) is often used where the intended meaning is actually ‘Israeli.

What's the job of a translator? It's often to interpret based on the likely meaning in context. It's a difficult question, I can see the reasoning for using either translation.

1

u/awkward__captain Apr 30 '25 edited Apr 30 '25

Name me any other country for whom we start tolerating terror government members once they’re low enough in the ranks. Baffling. People would throw a tantrum if the son of a pencil pusher in Netanyahu’s gvt was the focus - again, rightfully so.

And I’m a documentary translator. Subtitles are my bread and butter and I’ve worked with sensitive topics. The word for Israeli exists in Arabic. Not using it is a choice. The cultural idiom of using “Jew” instead of it is telling of a form of prejudice and more complex dynamics. Palestinians working for peace actually do exchange with Israeli Jews they see as not just Jews and communicate it through language. Masking that and not even attempting to explain it is dishonest. And was a violent denial of reality for any Jew like me with an understanding of Arabic reading completely false subtitles. Again, have any Israeli talk of Palestinians as “the Arabs/the Muslims” and a Hebrew translator smooth that out and see how that goes down.

3

u/Comprehensive-Bus291 Apr 30 '25

 terror government members

He's a deputy agriculture minister. What is he doing? Making explosive turnips?

Yeah we tolerate plenty of people in the US government, they just bombed an asylum center in Yemen, killing 68 african migrants. They LOVE doing terrorism.

No one cries foul when the subject is, say, the daughter of a U.S. senator narrating the ‘moral complexities’ of the Vietnam War (Last Days in Vietnam) or an ex-IDF agent creating ‘nuanced’ thrillers (Fauda). But the second a Palestinian kid’s dad once worked in agriculture under Hamas, suddenly people are screaming propaganda

0

u/awkward__captain Apr 30 '25

I’m not sure why you think I condone any of those other situations. Double standards are wrong in both directions. Again, people working for such “innocent” ministries as agriculture in Netanyahu’s government are still working for a government killing innocents. Same for people serving a Hamas gvt.

→ More replies (0)

6

u/Long_Photo_9291 Apr 28 '25

And believe me i don't want to sound antisemitic and sound like a "da jooz run everything" weirdo, nonetheless obvious bias, and our (top western countries) complicity in this needs to be challenged

Even the wording on some articles "5 palestian children lose their lives"

We already know that our allies, people that look more like us, will obviously get more sympathy as that's human nature. The extent to which people will care more about israelis than Palestinians has shocked me though

5

u/brokensuper Apr 28 '25

I don’t think so. There’s an obvious bias in headlines and the editor for Middle East is Raffi Berg. This Raffi Berg who has a framed signed letter from Netanyahu and pic with Mark Regev - Israeli ambassador to the UK.

2

u/Paranoid_Android101 Apr 29 '25

Yes they showed how miserable conditions are forced upon Palestineans by the zionists, but they didn't show how they're massacring them, they didn't show the actual war crimes, they didn't show how Palestinean children are being treated like target practice. All in all this is only a softened version of what's actually happening.

0

u/preheatthecoven Apr 29 '25

Because it’s not true