Like other billionaire media outlets, the Daily Mail predictably disliked TV icon Louis Theroux’s new documentary The Settlers. But in a strange article trying to paint him in a sinister light, the right-wing rag seemed to take most issue with the fact that he actually gave an accurate portrayal of Israeli occupation in Palestine.
Richard Sanders, who in 2024 directed a powerful and comprehensive Al Jazeera documentary about Investigating war crimes in Gaza, highlighted the Mail‘s problem with accepting facts on Israel:
"His interviewees are carefully chosen, to reinforce the BBC narrative that Israelis are the oppressors and Palestinians their victims.”
The Daily Mail doing what the Daily Mail does. /1https://t.co/p49kOZ2Q75
— Richard Sanders (@PulaRJS) April 28, 2025
‘How dare Lous Theroux portray oppressors as oppressors?’
Portraying the fact that “Israelis are the oppressors and Palestinians their victims” is hardly controversial. Even Israel’s first prime minister David Ben Gurion recognised that. And as UN expert Francesca Albanese has made clear:
I’m required to be impartial, to document the facts objectively, and to assess them according to the applicable legal framework, which is humanitarian law, international human rights law, and the other conventions that are a complement to the human rights system. Once I’ve made my conclusions, it’s not up to me to strive for equidistance among the parties.
And her conclusions were that:
here, there are no parties. There is an unlawful occupier [Israel], and an occupied people in perpetuity [Palestinians]. There is a state [Israel] that continues to advance what has the hallmark of settler-colonial practices, and it’s committing international crimes.
In particular, she concluded that the world has been witnessing “the first live-streamed settler-colonial genocide” since October 2023.
Theroux’s portrayal wasn’t about fringe extremists. It encapsulated the settler-colonial experience in Israel.
The Daily Mail, like other right-wing voices, tried in its review of The Settlers to paint Israeli settler extremism as a fringe phenomenon that the Israeli state dislikes (which it doesn’t). Settler agitator Daniella Weiss is highly influential, for example, and has reportedly played a part in establishing almost every illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank since 1967. She is part and parcel of Israeli settler-colonialism.
The Mail also acted like the BBC has shown anti-Israel bias. The reality, however, is that the BBC‘s coverage of the Gaza genocide has been awful, with clear pro-Israel bias. One example was it bowing to pressure from genocide-apologists to pull an important documentary about Gaza in February. Over a thousand UK-based media professionals condemned this “politically motivated censorship”, which they described as “racist” and “dehumanising”. They accused the BBC of “erasing Palestinian suffering” and “suppressing narratives that humanise Palestinians”.
The truth is that Louis Theroux’s documentary is a straightforward piece of much-needed context that has been sorely lacking in the coverage of both the BBC and other outlets. The Mail and other right-wing defenders of Israeli crimes would simply prefer for the public not to see that context.
Featured image via the Canary
