A Review of Louis Theroux’s The Settlers (2025)
By Lauren Banko
Jul/Aug 25
Louis Theroux’s 2025 documentary The Settlers, produced by the BBC and available on BBC iPlayer, chronicles atrocities committed by Israeli settlers against Palestinian civilians, their homes, and their lands. For the viewer, these atrocities are haunting because they are so mundane. Their mundanity stems from the fact that they have been going on since Israel began its military occupation of the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza Strip in June of 1967.
The documentary film focuses on the most right-wing and extremist of Israel’s settlers in occupied Palestine. Still, this comes at a moment in which the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised to use “full force” to continue the genocide against Palestinians in Gaza that began in October of 2023. As such, Gaza remains in sight, literally and figuratively, throughout the hour-long documentary.
The term “settlers” refers to Israelis, overwhelmingly Jewish, who live in territories occupied by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War. These lands are not officially under Israeli sovereignty. They are located in the Palestinian West Bank labelled by Israelis and Christian Zionists as “Judea and Samaria.” Israeli settlers are often motivated by religious or ideological beliefs as they view the West Bank as part of the biblical “Land of Israel.” Over half a million Israelis live illegally as settlers in the occupied West Bank and over 200,000 live in illegally annexed East Jerusalem.
Theroux’s documentary aims to expose the ideological narratives, actions, and demands of Israel’s settlers in both the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip. It features the most vociferous, noxious of extremist settler leaders, Daniella Weiss. Known as the “godmother” of the settler project, she is responsible for taking the lead in creating hundreds of outposts and settlements over the course of her nearly 80 years of age. Weiss spoke several times to mild-mannered Theroux as he traveled across the West Bank and southern Israel in late 2024.
Weiss, an early and leading member of Israel’s settlement lobby Gush Emunim (Bloc of the Faithful) since the 1970s, currently lives in the settlement of Kedumim. When speaking to Theroux, she stressed her support for Israel’s resettlement of Gaza and removal of all Arabs and shared plans as to how she and her followers intend to do this.
One of the documentary’s most shocking scenes features Theroux following Weiss in her vehicle to the border between Israel and Gaza as she attempts to enter the besieged Gaza Strip. She is stopped by so-called Israel Defense Forces (IDF) who intercept her car. Her reason for attempting this, as she explained to Theroux, is to show other Israelis that they can simply enter Gaza. The nonchalant nature of Weiss’s action and her routinized explanation for it are deeply disturbing.
The United States government is far from blameless in these atrocities. The Settlers comes at a time when the United States has given Israel a full license to commit genocide in Gaza. Worse yet, Washington further compounded the humanitarian crisis in Palestine when the Trump Administration terminated President Biden’s travel ban on extremist settlers and his sanctions against extremist Zionist organizations.
It is often said that the most extremist of these settlers – those responsible for over 1800 incidents of violence against Palestinians since Oct. 7, 2023 – are in the minority. And, according to a January 2025 poll in Israel, just 26% of Israeli citizens support re-establishing the settlement of Gush Katif in Gaza (Ellie Grant. “Who is Daniella Weiss? The ‘Godmother’ of Israel’s settler movement now calling for a return to Gaza.” Apr. 28, 2025. The Jewish Chronicle.). But Weiss, with her casual manner in speaking about ethnic cleansing, is supported by extremist, pro-settler ministers in Israel’s current government. Men like Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir frequently express their support for not only the expansion of settlements in the West Bank and new settlements in Gaza, but the murderous actions carried out by settlers against Palestinians.
Theroux, for his part, is not naïve. He is aware of the post-1967 history of the Israeli occupation and of Palestinian resistance, making clear to state that the occupation and settlements are illegal under international law. He is also aware of what Zionism has aimed to do since the establishment of the state in 1948. Theroux even made a previous documentary about Israeli right-wing extremists in 2011 (The Ultra-Zionists). At one point in The Settlers, when Theroux and his small team are passing through an Israeli checkpoint in the West Bank near Hebron, a soldier queries how long they will be in Israel. Theroux responds curtly, “Hang on, I don’t think we’re in Israel.” He continues to question the soldier’s claim, insisting that they were in the Palestinian West Bank.
At another point in the film, an American Jewish settler named Ari Abramowitz refuses to recognize that Palestinians exist, arguing that to say, “the Palestinian territories” in reference what he calls “the heart of Judea” is to admit that “a Jihadist Palestinian state” exists in “right in the heart of Israel.” In response, Theroux presses Abramowitz as to why he insists on referring to a Jihadist rather than “a Palestinian state.” Theroux gets Abramowitz to admit that what he aspires to do is to take territory through war against Palestinian Arabs.
Theroux’s film is disturbing not just for the content – the practices and ideologies of the Israeli settlers – but for the character of the Israelis he speaks to. Abramowitz is deeply tense throughout his interview with Theroux with various weapons strapped to his body. In one scene, Theroux refers to Weiss as a sociopath after she refuses to acknowledge that Palestinians under military occupation are human beings whose lives are equal to the lives of any other human being. This comment comes after Weiss pushes Theroux to deliberately get him to push her back, in her way of explaining settler violence as exaggerated.
Israel’s genocide in Gaza is referred to throughout the film. An early scene shows Orthodox Jewish tourists in southern Israel gathering to view what Theroux called “the ruins” of Gaza. The Israelis he speaks to at various events repeatedly stress their right to go into Gaza, take Palestinian land there, and ethnically cleanse Palestinians from that land. And a depressing number of his interview subjects are American. According to statistics from 2023, about 15% of Israeli settlers in the West Bank hold American citizenship (Chris McGreal. “How American citizens are leading rise of ‘settler violence’ on Palestinian lands.” Dec. 15, 2023. The Guardian).
Theroux also spends a good deal of time with Palestinians who have faced extreme settler violence. In filming daily interactions between Palestinians in Hebron with settlers and soldiers who control most of the old city, the sheer arrogance and propensity to violence by the latter of the two groups becomes readily clear. The settlers’ ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinians in the old city with the support of the IDF is also evident. The documentary shows that residents cannot reach their homes without going through checkpoints and gates while facing daily harassment.
Palestinians featured in the film have also spoken out since The Settlers first aired in late April 2025. Palestinian rights activist and Hebron native Issa Amro said soldiers raided his house, threatened to arrest him, and physically harassed him for his part in walking with Theroux around Hebron (“Israeli soldiers, settlers harass Palestinian activist featured in BBC film.” May 4, 2025. Al Jazeera.). Mohammad Hureini from Masafer Yatta in the South Hebron Hills, who was featured in the documentary hiding from Israeli soldiers in a building alongside the production team, recently critiqued the final production, saying that Palestinian experiences and voices regarding the violence of Israeli settlers did not get equal time (Mohammad Hureini. “I was in the BBC documentary ‘The Settlers.’” May 6, 2025. Mondoweiss).
Theroux’s voiceover, which closes the film, notes that the settlers he encountered felt themselves accountable only to God. Herein lies a crucial lesson that The Settlers illustrates consistently: the unshakable belief amongst the settler movement and its supporters of the inviolability of Jewish presence in what they believe is the biblical land of Israel. The settlers blissfully endorse violence against Palestinians as a means to achieve such a presence.
Theroux is aware of the complex process of settler colonialism in terms of its practice and ideology, and he is aware that Palestinian resistance comes as an ongoing response to ethnic cleansing. By showing that Israeli settlers feel that their religion has promised them the right to take the lives of other humans, Theroux deconstructs the very premise that his interlocutors believe in so vehemently.
Lauren Banko is a research fellow at the University of Manchester. She received her PhD in Near and Middle Eastern History from SOAS, London. Her research centers around the history of Palestine, refugees and displacement, borders, and migration in the history of the Middle East.
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