The Land of The Settlers - Reception

Reception

• New York Times described it as “pessimistic, angry and highly personal.”

• Lewis Roth with Americans for Peace Now said, “has had an impact in Israel because of what you see on the screen, but also because of who made it. Chaim Yavin has been Israel’s lead newscaster, and probably one the best-known voices and faces in the Jewish community.”

• Tom Segev of Ha'aretz (5/27/05) wrote, "…For two and half years, Yavin wandered the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with a small hand-held camera, which he operated himself, without a technical crew. Here and there he was reviled as the representative of the hostile leftist media, but in general the settlers spoke to him on the assumption that he was their man, and justly so: Until now he was everyone's man."

• Raanan Shaked of Yedioth Ahronoth (6/1/05), wrote, "After watching The Land of the Settlers, every caring Israeli, every humane Israeli, should get up next Saturday, go to the settlement nearest to his place of residence, and drag its inhabitants, kicking and screaming, across the road to the side of sanity.

• Assaf Schneider of Ma'ariv (6/1/05) wrote, "The documentation with the small Sony camera is an effective trick that always works…The difference is that here, it all comes together to present one unappealing idea: Disengagement has taken place long ago. Thirty years ago, to be precise, when the first settlers remained in Sebastia. Only it is a disengagement by them from Israel, from Israeliness. They let it slip now and then, when they talk contemptuously about 'those who live in Tel Aviv and Haifa,' when they threaten matter-of-factly to burn their ID cards, when they call anyone who is not them 'a generation of wusses,' when they fail to understand why Yavin does not want a day to come when 'Mohammed will make us all coffee.' The feeling is harsh: After all, it is true that 'we are brothers,' and the Israeli governments over the generations did indeed send them…"