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Top Israeli news anchor attacks occupation

Chris McGreal in Jerusalem
Wednesday June 1, 2005
The Guardian

The revered anchor of Israel's Channel One news programme for more than three decades has caused controversy by making a personalised documentary in which he concludes that Jewish settlements are endangering the country and that the occupation of Palestinian land is a crime.

"Since 1967, we have been brutal conquerors, occupiers, suppressing another people," Haim Yavin, who was a founder of Channel One and once its chief editor, says in the programme.

Even before the five-part series opened last night, settler leaders were calling for the 72-year-old, known as "Mr Television", to be sacked, because they said he was no longer objective.

The documentary would be sensitive in Israel at any time, but particularly now in the weeks before the government plans to remove thousands of Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip and a small part of the West Bank.

Channel One turned down the documentary and it is being shown on a rival channel that recently lost its licence and is about to go off air.

The series is a the result of Yavin's visits during more than two years to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, carrying a small camera to film ordinary people - some of the 400,000 Jewish settlers, Palestinian residents and Israeli soldiers - in the territories.

"My intention was to get the personal feelings of the settlers, of the Palestinians," Yavin told the Guardian yesterday. "It has strengthened my former opinion that we have to come to terms with the Palestinians; they are not all terrorists.

"Some of my friends on the left hate the settlers. I don't hate them, I appreciate them. I even like them, but I say in the documentary that I think they are wrong and they are endangering us."

The experience has left Yavin more pessimistic about the prospects for peace. "I think the majority of Palestinians and the majority of Israelis want peace and they're willing to divide the country," he said. "But there's such mistrust. Hamas terrorism did such damage to both peoples that I don't think it can be repaired."

He not only questions the settlements and the occupation, but the commitment of successive governments, including Ariel Sharon's, to curbing Israel's hunger for land and the expansion of its colonies.

"This merrymaking will never be stopped," he said. "I regard this as a Greek tragedy. I don't see any solution."

Settler leaders have reacted furiously to the series, saying it will "divide Israeli society". The head of the settler council, Benzi Lieberman, has called for Yavin to be removed as Channel One's news anchor.

"Even if his opinions and the manner in which he presents them may be considered legitimate, his continued serving in the objective newscaster's position constitutes a blow to media ethics and professional integrity," he said.

Among those filmed by Mr Yavin is an Israeli soldier in Hebron who wonders how his compatriots can remain silent in the face of the "horrors" the army commits, and the settlers who ask him why he's not shooting Palestinian children.

Some settlers tell Yavin that the Palestinians must be given a deadline to leave the occupied territories or be forced out. "Otherwise we should just bomb and kill them," says one woman.

· Jerusalem city council has issued orders to demolish the homes of hundreds of Palestinians in an area that Israeli settlers want to be turned into a Jewish neighbourhood.

The council, which has initially ordered 88 buildings to be razed, says it intends to make the Silwan area, just outside the Old City walls, a national park. Palestinian officials say that the real intent is to clear the area for settlers.