Louis Theroux sheds the light on the extreme Israeli settler mentality (Al Mayadeen; illustrated by Zeinab al-Hajj)

Louis Theroux: The Settlers is a powerful exposé that forces viewers to confront the harsh reality of the Israeli settler movement. More than a travelogue or a neutral survey, this 61‑minute film shines a spotlight on an extremist, hardline ideology that grabs land, pushes out Palestinians, and rejects the thought of peace.

Colonial violence

Theroux opens the documentary in al-Khalil (Hebron), one of the oldest cities in the world, but also a center point of occupation. Armed settlers move freely through Palestinian neighborhoods while residents live in fear of violence, subjected to arbitrary curfews. Concrete barriers and barbed wires cut through streets once shared by families of different faiths. By showing these barriers up close and watching settlers patrol with rifles, Theroux makes it clear that these outposts are built by force, not by any rightful claim.

The film then travels north to an Israeli settlement known for its hard‑line activists. Here, we meet young men who celebrate violence as a way to protect what they claim is their homeland. These interviews are chilling: settlers speak freely about expanding settlements into the West Bank and even Gaza, believing that their interpretation of divine law outweighs all human rights. Theroux doesn’t conceal his disgust, calling out extreme comments as he hears them, demanding that these settlers explain how they can justify taking other people’s land.

The miracle of the settler mindset

Theroux’s interviews also shed a bright light at the contradictions, on one hand interviewed settlers claim that they are armed to protect themselves from Arabs who lust for blood, but minutes later we discover that it’s the other way around; these very same people express their intent to take over land and kick out all the Palestinians just because they are “Arabs”.

Similarly, the British-American journalist made a point of asking each settler he met where he was originally from; the answers varied, but none said they were “from here”. This is a technique often used by the 54-year-old filmmaker, as he would ask subtle questions that seem very casual, often letting his interviewees speak for themselves, revealing their true nature without any pressure.

This ingenious trademark was used multiple times in previous Theroux documentaries. Notably, it worked very well when he went to South Africa and interviewed the Boer leader in the country back in 2008.

Perhaps one of the most chilling ‘characters’ in this documentary is Daniella Weiss, one of the founding mothers of the Israeli settler movement in Occupied Palestine. Watching her interviews was like watching a Disney villain, the evil laughs, the exclusionist mentality, and the unapologetic monstrosity; Theroux managed to get away with calling her a sociopath with just a little violent push, but an extremely telling one.

Screengrab from BBC's Louis Theroux: The Settlers

The Palestinian voice

At the same time, Theroux gives Palestinians the space to share their stories. We hear from Issa Amro, an activist in al-Khalil, who describes his day-to-day life among the IOF and Israeli settlers. These personal accounts bring home the daily humiliation and danger Palestinians face under occupation. Water and electricity are cut without warning; olive groves are ripped up; people of all ages risk being shot just for being Palestinian. By listening to Issa and others, Theroux paints a picture of what it is like to live under a brutal occupation that disregards you as a human being.

Still, one hour can only scratch the surface of an occupation rooted in a century of history and politics. The documentary touches on the 1967 war, but does not fully explain how international law regards these settlements as illegal; viewers who want deeper context on the 1948 Nakba, or United Nations resolutions, will need to look elsewhere. Additionally, due to the Israeli never-ending need for blood, the documentary was shot before the Israeli aggression on the West Bank began this year. Since January 21, 2025, daily incursions, killings, and arrests have taken place in the West Bank as laws get enacted and approved by the Israeli cabinet to further steal land from Palestinians.

Who will finally listen?

While the documentary offers amazing insight into the reality of the occupation of the West Bank and the expansionist settler movement, does it say anything new?

As Theroux’s camera rolls and the settlers excitedly articulate their expansionist vision, there lingers the tragic cry of Palestinians who have been calling out these very injustices for more than 75 years, with little to no response from the outside world. Since the Nakba in 1948, when more than 700,000 Palestinians were uprooted from their homes, survivors and their descendants have carried first-hand testimonies of loss and displacement into international forums, newspapers, classrooms, and courtrooms. UN resolutions, human rights reports, and documentary films have detailed mass expulsions, land seizures, and genocides unfolding, only for mandates to be ignored or suppressed by political vetoes and strategic alliances. The result is a deafening silence in which the Palestinian narrative becomes just “background noise”.

Activists like Issa Amro remind us that these ongoing sufferings are not relics of a distant past but living realities: families still separated by checkpoints and children coming of age knowing nothing beyond the walls they’re confined in. Yet every call for intervention winds its way through the maze of geopolitics, where oil, arms deals, and allegiances continue to outweigh basic human rights.

Voices raised in Palestinian towns and refugee camps have, over and over, fallen on deaf ears in world capitals; petitions to the International Criminal Court stall in a bureaucratic void, while high-profile media coverage too often focuses on episodic violence rather than decades-old systematic dehumanization.

What Louis Theroux achieves in The Settlers is a momentary reminder of the Palestinian cause, by showing Palestinian testimony alongside unvarnished settler rhetoric, he forces viewers to reckon not only with what is being done, but with how long these actions have gone unchallenged.

Yet even these powerful testaments can’t alone break through the stagnation that’s allowed the settler project to endure, and the genocide in Gaza to continue. Unless international law is enforced, unless media coverage shifts from “clashes” to the raw realities on the ground, and unless audiences actively seek out the voices that have for so long been marginalized, Theroux’s film risks becoming another testimony archived, and then forgotten, like so many that preceded it. In that sense, The Settlers both illuminates injustice and echoes a long-asked melancholic question Palestinians have been asking since 1948: Who will finally listen?