Israeli Newscaster's Documentary Courts Controversy

JERUSALEM, May 30 - For nearly 40 years, Haim Yavin has been the calm, objective face of Israeli news, the anchor of Channel 1's broadcast since the founding of Israeli television in 1968.

Now 72, and known here as "Mr. TV," Mr. Yavin is about to deliver himself of a documentary about Israel's settlements in the West Bank that is pessimistic, angry and intensely personal.

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He films a soldier who complains that the settlers keep pressing him to shoot Palestinian children. When a settler tells him that if the army can keep the peace, "Muhammad" will make the Israelis coffee, Mr. Yavin retorts, "I'm not willing to rule another people, not willing for 'Muhammad' to make me coffee."

The more he traveled, the more obsessed he became, he said, with the cycle of "occupation, settlements and this terrible terrorism of the Palestinians, which no explanation can condone and which harms themselves, their cause and the Israelis."

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With the Gaza pullout, he feels some change in the air. But he is not optimistic. "If the Israeli citizen knows he'll really get peace with the Palestinians - like U.S. and Canada - he'd give up half of Jerusalem," he said. "But there is such an abyss between Israelis and Palestinians, and this distrust is so big, on both sides."

Mr. Yavin trailed off, then asked: "Is Israel really and sincerely doing its best to compromise?" And then he said: "I'm not sure any power on earth can move a people to give any land to your enemy, one that really wants to harm you."

read more...

its done quite well, but what is clear so far is that for the settlers they are doing gods work..and the palestenians are simply "in the way"

very depressing for me to watch, though my son got an education of the cruelty of religion......

Mr. Yavin says that many Israelis admire the settlers as the real Zionists and pioneers in a soft age. "I also have sympathy for them," he said. "They are idealists. But they are wrong, and they are endangering us."


Do Israelis tend to differentiate between the majority of settlers and those settlers who spout bigoted crap and incite violence against the Palestinians? It's just that if they feel sympathy for the latter group of settlers, I don't understand it at all. How is it any more possible to feel sympathy for them than it would be to feel sympathy for those Palestinians who spout bigoted crap against Jews and who incite violence against Israelis?

I can understand where the admiration for any pioneering spirit comes from, though. I just think that when it comes to settlers in the Occupied Territories, the admination is misplaced. I found myself sucked into the romanticism and toughness of the whole halutzim thing when Benny Morris or Tom Segev (I can't remember which it was) wrote about them...


Violet...

whereas perhaps in the beginning there were settlers in the westbank of different strips...were now into 2nd and 3rd generations. I get the impression that the overall feeling is that "its gods will" for the vast majority. However, .they really dont say the palestenians are "lesser humans, are like monkeys etc. Instead the emphises is that the land belongs to the jews..the arabs can stay, live here, be citiznes with full civil rights...but "we have more rights (i.e. some are more equal than others).

its kind of a softer, kinder form of racism, no screaming incitment (this is the majority).

As far as his sympathy goes....my impression was that it came from that these people believe with all their heart in what they are doing. They speak quietly with those on the left, while their being sceamed at. They are willing to sit down and discuss the land, Judaism, what moshe said, where sara (or whomever) did what and where.....but the examples in the program showed that they wont discuss the palestenian right to the land or their history here, there was simply nothing to discuss.

So to a degree it has the determination of the "old zionist ideal of making something out of nothing" with the addition of messianic religion.

kind of scary in that a whole section of the population in a democratic society can believe in such things....its a major failure of the education system that allowed for such a thing, but then I'm slightly biased about religion

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1496298,00.html

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"The revered anchor of Israel's Channel One news programme for more than three decades has caused controversy by making a personalised documentary in which he concludes that Jewish settlements are endangering the country and that the occupation of Palestinian land is a crime.

"Since 1967, we have been brutal conquerors, occupiers, suppressing another people," Haim Yavin, who was a founder of Channel One and once its chief editor, says in the programme."

<snip>

"The series is a the result of Yavin's visits during more than two years to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, carrying a small camera to film ordinary people - some of the 400,000 Jewish settlers, Palestinian residents and Israeli soldiers - in the territories.

"My intention was to get the personal feelings of the settlers, of the Palestinians," Yavin told the Guardian yesterday. "It has strengthened my former opinion that we have to come to terms with the Palestinians; they are not all terrorists.

"Some of my friends on the left hate the settlers. I don't hate them, I appreciate them. I even like them, but I say in the documentary that I think they are wrong and they are endangering us."

how we can view this documentary in the States? I got the impression from the article that it was only aired on Israeli TV...

a very clear, non agressive documentary about the settlers probably wont go over very well. It shows them as "people"....and it show the palestenians also as "gasp" people....I'm afraid neither of the extemist sides will like this very much...at best they'll take pieces out of context to "prove their points"...which will miss the main point, which is that though the settlers may be wrong, it doesnt take away from the fact that they are people, flawed yes, (perhaps we can see them as slightly damaged goods?)....

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3092990,00.html

Settler group demands popular TV host be fired, says documentary series one-sided and anti-Semitic

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"Yesha Council, an organization representing settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, has demanded Channel 1 get rid of legendary broadcaster Chaim Yavin.

Yesha Council head Benzi Lieberman filed a complaint with acting Broadcast Authority Chairman Yair Aloni, charging Yavin - a legendary
broadcast personality known as "Mr. Television" - should be prevented from presenting his documentary series, "Land of the Settlers," because it is he presents only left-wing political views.

Lieberman said, "Even Broadcast Authority officials were shocked when a presenter on a government channel presented strongly left-wing political views that are inconsistent with the objectivity required of someone in his position."

this one concentrated on hebron....where the most extremist of the settlers live....it showed how the unrelenting pressure on the palestenians are forcing them to move out of certain sections of the city. ("transfer if you will). It showed the soldiers disgust with the settlers and how the govt protects them...

i got the impression that these settlers are no different from the jihadnikim. True they have no suicide bombers...but that is because they have the army doing much of their bidding and simply due to a culture that at this point doesnt allow it or need it at the present.

it also showed that these jews (as an israeli i disown them) do not like being on camera doing their nasty deeds.....couldnt figure that one out though as i figured that with god on their side they should be proud....

i felt disgusted and ashamed that these are my brethren.....religion is probably the most disgusting thing man has ever devised.

asylum in Palestine, since they feel so unwanted?

We should be so lucky?

I kid, I kid:)