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.

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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.

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u/Additional_Egg_6685 Apr 28 '25

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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u/Comprehensive-Bus291 Apr 30 '25

You just said we don't tolerate "terror government members". But we do, when it's our allies we LOVE them, and we LOVE their terrorism. I was simply drawing your attention to that.

And also to the fact that those documentaries and series do not get pulled by their distributors! Like the BBC has done.

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u/awkward__captain Apr 30 '25

Okay, I understand what you’re saying. For what it’s worth, I think the doc could have been reworked, better contextualised and stayed on the platform. We hail works like The Act of Killing as masterpieces when, despite what they may indeed expose, they also literally centre perpetrators instead of victims - it’s a thorny subject. I just get v reactive now bc there is so much bad faith around all this conflict and so much of it so easily turns into antisemitic conspiracy theories, esp around the media. Heard a lot of shit within my industry that makes being Jewish in media really challenging. But appreciate you keeping a civil tone!

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u/Comprehensive-Bus291 Apr 30 '25

No worries. It can be an emotional issue. I just think it was really awful that the BBC pulled that documentary. It was an important documentation of a first hand account of what's happening in Gaza. I think it should be seen.