Palestinian activist's home ‘raided' by Israeli soldiers for appearing in Louis Theroux documentary
A Palestinian activist who appeared in a Louis Theroux documentary about settlers in the West Bank has reportedly had his home raided by Israeli soldiers.
Issa Amro, co-founder of the non-violent activist group Youth Against Settlements, shared videos on social media of confrontations with Israeli military at his home, and another of a group of Israeli settlers forcing entry to the property.
Posting on X, Amro said: 'The soldiers raided my house today, they wanted revenge from me for participating in the BBC documentary 'the settlers', after the army left the settlers raided my house, they injured one activist and cut the tree, they stole tools and the garbage containers.'
Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are illegal under international law. The UN Security Council have said that the settlements have 'no legal validity, constituting a flagrant violation under international law.'
Amro lives in Hebron, the capital of the West Bank's largest governorate. In Louis Theroux's documentary, The Settlers, Amro shows Theroux around the Israeli-occupied area of the city, home to about 35,000 Palestinians and 700 settlers protected by the Israeli military.
The documentary, which aired in April on BBC Two, shows Amro and Theroux being confronted and intimidated by military as they walk around the area. When the pair are sworn at by a passing driver, Amro explains to Theroux: 'You deserve a middle finger if you report about Palestinians.'
'By international law, the settlements are illegal,' Amro said in the documentary. 'They don't see us as equal human beings who deserve the same rights they do.'
In one of the videos posted on X, Amro challenges a group of balaclava-covered soldiers at his house, asking why they have their faces covered. One soldier replies: 'You know exactly why.'
A Nobel peace prize nominee and one of the West Bank's most prominent activists, Amro is best known for his work for Youth Against Settlements, which aims to end the expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank.
Theroux, posting on X, said: '@Issaamro who featured in The Settlers has posted videos of his latest harassment by settlers and soldiers. Our team has been in regular contact with him since the documentary and over the last 24 hours. We are continuing to monitor the situation.'
The Israel Defence Forces were approached for comment.
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I've lost control of the kitchen
Looking back, I can pinpoint my fatal blunder. It was lunch. It was like the West allowing Vladimir Putin to help himself to the Crimean peninsula without a peep, basically. This is how it happened. My husband had invited two families to stay over the May bank holiday which bled into half term. For four days. 'Don't worry,' he said, in light tones, ahead of their arrival. 'I've told them they're bringing all the food and doing all the cooking.' As if I'd welcome this wonderful idea, when in fact what he'd suggested was the domestic equivalent of handing over the nuclear football and the codes behind my back. The guests are delightful and I couldn't wait to have them all (five adults and five children), but guests handling the catering was never going to happen under my roof, as my husband ought to have known. One, I am a fast and capable cook. I came second to Ed Balls in the final of the BBC's Celebrity Best Home Cook series (and maintain that he won because he made a pirate cake with full sails out of chocolate and he blubbed). Two, if an Englishman's home is his castle, the female equivalent of the White House Situation Room is a woman's kitchen. The last thing I needed, in other words, was several other bossy middle-class parents occupying my catering HQ on Exmoor. Plus, I'd already ordered a van-busting home delivery from Sainsbury's. On the Art of War principle that 'supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemies' resistance without fighting', I replied: 'Oh no, don't worry! But maybe they can do lunches?' Category error on my part. Perhaps I'm late to the party here but, as it turned out, the families didn't really have a concept of 'lunch' as a separate meal, after breakfast and before supper. They simply prepared and ate fare whenever they or their children were hungry, which was, of course, all the time. In more civilised places than the Johnson compound, i.e. Provence or Tuscany, when you have 12 people for four days it's understood that one of the 'main' meals will be 'out', i.e. at a restaurant to spare mine hosts, and the convention is that the guests stump for this. But the farm is two miles from Tarmac. It's an hour round trip for a pint of milk. A two-hour round trip to a pub. All meals are eaten in and none are 'opt'. The last thing I needed was several other bossy middle-class parents occupying my catering HQ on Exmoor On day one, everyone arrived at teatime after extended drives on the M4 and M5. We had tea and cake, and a late-ish supper. So far, so good. Two meals down! Day two was different. When provisioning, I'd texted my husband's nephew to ask what his three heavenly girls ate for breakfast. 'Bacon eggs toast juice fruit yoghurts porridge etc,' came the detailed reply. I therefore rose at 8 a.m. to slam the first tray of bacon in, yet there were people refilling the coffee jug and boiling eggs and stirring porridge at elevenses. Still, the guests did a fine clear-up and cleared off with the kids to a local beauty spot while I made scones for tea. Everyone returned from Tarr Steps at 1 p.m., making noises about their lunch duty, and invaded the kitchen. For hours. With what I felt was superhuman restraint – I can make an apple crumble in five minutes flat, and on Best Home Cook I made crab ravioli on a bed of fennel with a citrus jus from scratch starting with flour and water for the homemade pasta in 35 minutes – I only said 'But how long does it actually take to boil rice?' loudly around three times. At 3 p.m. (!) there was a simple lunch of delicious dahl (brought from London in Tupperware) and the rice on the table. As I shovelled it in, I worked out that at this rate, there would be half an hour until tea; tea would run straight into children's supper; and then adult supper. I had an awful vision of us all mealing non-stop till bedtime. I therefore put my fork and foot down and made an announcement. First, there would be a 'breakfast window' of an hour. As it was already past 3.30, I went on, we would have the scones for pudding. This went down well. So I went to the kitchen to fetch the scones. It was then that I discovered a full tray of chicken pieces in the Aga bubbling in their juices. Genuinely panicked, I returned laden with the scones, Rodda's and jams. 'And what meal is all the chicken in the Aga for?' I queried, brokenly. The table fell silent. 'Oh I put them in, just in case the children were hungry… later,' one perfect guest replied as a dozen arms shot out to grab the scones as if they'd been deliberately starved by colonial aggressors for months. I sank to my chair and applied golden, crusted Rodda's thickly to my scone. It was clear there'd still be a whole other meal 'later', i.e. between now and children's supper and, after that, two more days of culinary occupation. On day three the dishwasher flooded. On day four, the Aga went out as if in protest and could not be relit. Looking back, yes – it was lunch. Lose lunch, and you'll be out-generalled in your own kitchen by a chicken traybake.
