Internet series reveals truth about settler-media relations

In "Giva 769" ("Hill 769"), currently serialized on settler radio station Arutz Sheva's web site, Director Yehezkel Lang's viewers are bombarded with the truth about relations between settlers and the media, from the settlers' point of view.

Take for instance this dramatic scene, where radio reporter Yaron Meged contacts Yaakov, a hilltop dweller with long sidelocks and tsitsit (ritual fringes) blowing in the wind.

Only a few moments earlier, the settler had thrown Meged out of his house and vehemently refused to be interviewed, but once Meged is attacked by a terrorist at the Hawara junction, he begs Yaakov to come and save him, and the settler obliges.

Only a few minutes elapse and the two men find themselves hiding behind the journalist's car as the terrorist, firing nonstop, closes in on them.

Meged breathes a sigh of relief when he sees Yaakov, but not for long.

"Take the dog down," he shouts to Yaakov as the bullets fly over their heads.

"What kind of language are you using?" Yaakov teases him. "What about your coexistence? Living together? Two states for two people?"

"What relevance does that have?" Meged shouts at him. "Take him down already."

And then the settler reveals to the journalist that he doesn't have a revolver. "Are you crazy? No revolver in a place like this?" Meged screams at him.

"Because of your friends, they confiscated my revolver," Yaakov replies.

"I'm not prepared to die," the journalist wails, and suddenly he changes his behavior and a strange smile covers his face. "He doesn't want me. He wants you. He doesn't know that I'm a journalist. I'm on his side. He loves me. I just have to tell him that."

"You're crazy," Yaakov shouts at him. "He isn't interested even if you're the chairman of Meretz."

But Meged doesn't listen. He stands up and shouts to the terrorist, "I am for Palestine, a journalist, I'm with you, on your side. I'm a leftist."

Yaakov tries to drag him back behind the car but Meged is adamant and continues to shout to the terrorist.

Yaakov, left without a choice, bangs the journalist's head against the side of the car. He faints and Yaakov flanks the terrorist and smashes his head with a giant stone.

Meged is revived and evacuated from the site. He reports on the radio that "a crazy settler" who was angry with the media for the reports about violence on the part of the settlers, banged his head against his car.

Fiction and reality

The video was shot at the actual Samarian settlement of Yitzhar. One of the scenes shows Yaakov studying the ruins of a building destroyed by the Israel Defense Forces. Another scene shows the way in which Palestinians have damaged his orchard. Throughout the series, Yaakov the settler is portrayed as a victim while Meged is shown as a liar.

The part of Yaakov is played by Yisrael Schreiber, a resident of Yitzhar, who is not a professional actor. Eli Shimon, a graduate of the Nissan Nativ acting studio, plays the part of Meged. Lang, also a graduate of Nissan Nativ and of the Ma'aleh School of Television, Film and the Arts, acts in the mini-series as well.

There is hardly a journalist who covers the settlements who has not found himself in some of the show's situations, which Lang purposely portrays in an extreme way.

Most people who live in the outposts will not speak with members of the media. They hate them and consider them liars and almost partners of the enemy.

The opinion of most of the journalists about the outpost residents is not much better and in the best case scenario, they go there with preconceived notions. From time to time, it is necessary to bring mediators, or advocates, who will connect between the two sides.

In Lang's film, the despised settler saves the man who hates him, "because the people who live on the hilltops are moral people who have values and who will not cross over red lines, which the media will never represent," Lang said.

Lang has no expectations of the media. "The media's colors and hues are all the same," he says. "I don't expect them to give honest reports about the people in the outposts or the settlements of Judea and Samaria. Even if in the end there are one or two journalists who are 'for us', they will always point out that they 'don't work for us' instead of rising above and providing reports of a different kind."

Lang says the media is the incarnation of evil and distortion for the way it portrays the settlers.

"True, I am being blunt," he says, "but the very bluntness of my messages is not different from the bluntness with which Joseph Cedar presents a hesder yeshiva student who is planning to blow up the Temple Mount, in his film 'Ha-hesder' ('Time of Favor'), or from the bluntness of many other films in which the settlers are presented as evil incarnate."

The scene in which the journalist begs the terrorist to leave him alone "because after all they are both from the same side," reveals his character according to Lang.

"But it also simply shows the efforts of a person who wishes to be saved from death, no matter how shameful the method may be." Lang says.

On the other hand, "the scene in which Yaakov the settler hastens to save the life of the journalist who is in a life-threatening situation is an attempt to show the residents of the outposts in a different light from how the media portray them. 'Giva 769' is merely the opposite mirror image of the one the media is used to absorbing and broadcasting to the general public about the people in the outposts. It is a story that the media will never ever tell you."