[MODEM NOISES]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
SIMON OSTROVSKY: We'd finally arrived at the Havat Gilad
outpost in the West Bank, which is home to some of the
most hardcore settlers.
This was a community that was prepared to live at the top of
a hill in the Palestinian territories, in defiance of
both international and Israeli law.
There to tell us about their lives were Simcha and Yosef, a
pair of teenagers who are busy doing what settlers in the
area did best--
building a house without a permit.
When they hear somebody say the West Bank, they think that
it's a war zone, it's dangerous.
You're living right next door to Arabic villages.
Are you fearful for your own safety, moving out here?
There's no fence around the settlement at all.
You're kind of exposed.
SIMCHA: I don't feel any--
like I'm afraid.
I have God here.
Yeah.
You getting used to it.
SIMON OSTROVSKY: But you can even hear the call to prayer
going now from the nearby Arabic town.
SIMCHA: Actually annoying.
SIMON OSTROVSKY: Simcha didn't seem to have much sympathy for
his Palestinian neighbors or their culture.
But then again, he was kind of pissed because a couple of
weeks ago they'd apparently burned down a house he'd
helped build, and killed his dog.
SIMCHA: Came in the morning, and they saw nobody here.
And then came two guys and just burned the house.
So after, all of our guys, they went to the village and
start fighting there, and it was a big mess, yeah.
SIMCHA: From our guys?
No.
SIMCHA: I think so.
SIMCHA: Yeah, probably they're afraid.
SIMCHA: We don't meet girls.
That's one of the problems.
SIMCHA: Lonely?
No, I never get lonely.
[HAMMERING]
[GUITAR STRUMMING]
SIMON OSTROVSKY: So you're going to start
a settlement band?
SIMCHA: Yeah.
We're going to just make Jewish blues, some kind of
something like that.
SIMCHA: Kind of.
SIMCHA: Ah, yeah.
SIMON OSTROVSKY: Simcha struck me as an oddly-normal teen for
someone who is taking part in a blatant land grab.
But the settlers don't see it that way.
In their view, God had promised the Jews this land.
End of story.
[SPEAKING HEBREW]
SIMON OSTROVSKY: What do you think the Arabs want?
[SPEAKING HEBREW]
SIMON OSTROVSKY: Does it make you angry that most of the
international community agrees with the Palestinians in that
you shouldn't be in the West Bank?
[SPEAKING HEBREW]
SIMON OSTROVSKY: Have you personally had any problems
with Israeli police?
[SPEAKING HEBREW]
SIMON OSTROVSKY: Simcha and I left Yosef to do some
construction while we took a stroll around the settlement.
I suppose if you do like everybody else here, you have
to start your own family soon.
SIMCHA: Yeah.
SIMON OSTROVSKY: But you also have to go to the military, so
how do you do both?
SIMCHA: I do military and I'm done.
SIMON OSTROVSKY: But you want to go to the army?
SIMCHA: Yeah, I want to go the army, yeah.
SIMON OSTROVSKY: Can you imagine a situation where
you'd be part of a unit that was ordered to provide
security for a demolition?
SIMCHA: Never.
No.
SIMON OSTROVSKY: What about the demolition of a
Palestinian's house?
SIMCHA: I'll be happy to do it.
That will be my dream.
SIMON OSTROVSKY: Simcha introduced me to Yair, a
19-year-old who was about to enlist in the army.
Yair's house had recently been destroyed by the police, and
he seemed even more vocally opinionated than both Yosef
and Simcha.
I wonder if you tried to look at it from the perspective of
the Palestinians.
Their fathers were here, their grandfathers were here, and
their great-great-grandfathers were here.
They don't know any other country.
YAIR: They do.
SIMON OSTROVSKY: They might say, where are
we supposed to go?
YAIR: You know how many countries have Arab
[INAUDIBLE]?
22.
We have one.
And now we have half of it.
Not even all of it.
And the little piece we have, they want to
steal from us again.
SIMON OSTROVSKY: Would be really stupid of me to say
that the Canaanites were here before Israel?
Maybe their descendants can claim to have
more rights than Jews.
YAIR: You see the Canaanites now?
You see them anywhere?
SIMON OSTROVSKY: No, I'm just trying to make a point that
history moves in many places, and many different ways.
YAIR: History moves.
Again, the Jewish people didn't move a millimeter.
SIMON OSTROVSKY: But even Israel says
this isn't your property.
YAIR: I feel sorry for the government that they feel that
they still, in Poland and Germany.
And they think, oy, Obama.
Oy, we are afraid of Obama.
We are afraid of all the rest of the world.
We are not in 1945 anymore.
That's it.
No Jew is going into the burning places anymore.
That's it.
Finish.
Done.
SIMON OSTROVSKY: Is it true that settlers sometimes attack
a Palestinian village as a reprisal against the Israeli
police destroying a settler's house?
YAIR: Uh, I heard about those things, but as a settler, I
never did that.
I never saw that.
I have no idea what they're speaking about.
I believe that it's a manipulation of the media.
Every media guy has a agenda.
My father always says that the only true thing in the
newspaper is the date.
That's it.
This is my ideology.
This is what I believe in.
I believe that the Israeli people should
live anywhere in Israel.
SIMON OSTROVSKY: I headed back to meet with Simcha and Yosef,
who'd taken a break from construction, and were
ordering a pizza from a nearby settlement called Kedumim.
The goal for Havat Gilad and Kedumim is to eventually merge
and form a settlement block, which would, in turn, separate
the Palestinian villages on either side of it.
In the meantime, I headed back to Tel Aviv across the Green
Line, and into Israel proper.
[SIREN]
SIMON OSTROVSKY: There's tons of soldiers and police here
today because they're expecting a confrontation with
the Palestinian demonstrators.
[SHOUTING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE]