HBO’s “Our Boys,” a Brutally Truthful Depiction of the Effects of Hate Crime
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The New Yorker
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 26 August 2019
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In 2014, a pair of crimes shocked Israelis and Palestinians. The first was the abduction and murder of three Israeli boys by a Hamas-linked group. Then there was an act of reprisal—the torture, burning, and murder of a Palestinian teen-ager named Mohammed Abu Khdeir—by Israeli right-wing extremists. Even by the standards of this conflict, the killings were shocking.
“Our Boys,” a co-production of HBO and the Israeli Keshet Studios, examines the forces that led to Abu Khdeir’s killing. It is not for the faint of heart, David Remnick says, but the series is as complex and deep a portrayal of the conflict as he has ever seen. Remnick spoke with two of the creators: Hagai Levi, an Israeli Jew, and Tawfiq Abu Wael, a Palestinian living in Israel. Abu Wael tells Remnick why he resisted pressure from activists not to participate in an Israeli production.
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| 0:48.1 | This is the Politics and More podcast. I'm David Remnick. |
| 1:03.8 | I've been following the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians for many years, and I've spent time there as a reporter, trying to understand what the conflict has done to the people |
| 1:08.5 | who live with it every single day. |
| 1:17.5 | I have not seen a depiction of the situation as complex and as deep as the 10-part series called Our Boys. |
| 1:23.9 | A co-production of HBO in the Israeli studio Keshet, Our Boys, tells a horrible true story. |
| 1:31.4 | In 2014, a Palestinian teenager named Muhammad Abu Qadere was kidnapped, burned, and brutally murdered. His body was left in the Jerusalem forest. The crime was an act of reprisal. Israeli |
| 1:37.7 | extremists were retaliating for the murder of three Israeli boys by a Hamas-linked group |
| 1:43.1 | just weeks earlier. |
| 1:50.1 | Our Boys thoroughly examines just about all of the forces that led to the death of Muhammad Abu Hedere. |
| 1:52.3 | It's not for the faint of heart. It just isn't. |
| 1:56.1 | But if you want to understand the currents of extremism and violence, |
| 1:59.0 | I really do recommend our boys to you highly. |
| 2:03.2 | Two of the creators of the show are Haggai Levi and Tofik Abu Wel. |
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