- Issa Amro posted videos on social media showing clashes with Israeli soldiers and settlers at his home in Hebron
- The activist said “they wanted to take revenge on me for taking part in the BBC documentary.”
LONDON: Israeli soldiers have raided the home of Issa Amro, a prominent Palestinian activist featured in Louis Theroux's recent BBC documentary The Settlers, in what he called retaliation for his appearance in the film.
Amro, a co-founder of the non-violent group Youth Against Settlements, posted videos on social media showing clashes with Israeli soldiers at his home in Hebron, as well as footage of Israeli settlers entering the area.
“Today soldiers broke into my house, they wanted to take revenge on me for participating in the BBC documentary “The Settlers”. After the army left, the settlers broke into my house, injured one activist and cut down a tree, stole tools and garbage containers,” he wrote in a message on X.
The incident comes as Israel has stepped up its military operations in the West Bank, while global attention remains focused on its war in Gaza. Rights groups have long accused Israeli settlers — often accompanied or protected by soldiers — of carrying out near-daily raids on Palestinian communities to intimidate residents and seize land.
Today soldiers broke into my house, they wanted revenge on me for taking part in the BBC documentary “The Settlers”. After the army left, the settlers broke into my house, injured one activist and cut down a tree, stole tools and garbage containers.
Israelis… pic.twitter.com/jYYYlr2XyS— Issa Amro عيسى عمرو (@Issaamro) May 3, 2025
Despite repeated condemnation from the international community, attacks by settlers and security forces have become more frequent and violent, forcing many Palestinians to flee their homes.
Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are considered illegal under international law. The expansion of settlements has drawn comparisons from human rights groups to the apartheid system that once existed in South Africa.
Amro, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, appears in The Settlers, a follow-up to Theroux's 2012 documentary The Ultra-Zionists. In the new film, he takes Theroux on a tour of Israeli-occupied Hebron, where some 700 settlers live under heavy military protection among a Palestinian population of about 35,000.
The documentary not only explores the everyday realities of life under occupation, but also examines the religious and ideological motives driving the settler movement.
Amro said Israeli police threatened to arrest him and told him not to file a complaint. In one video posted on X, he confronts soldiers in balaclavas and asks why their faces are covered. One responds: “You know exactly why.”
. @Issaamro, who starred in The Settlers, posted a video of him being harassed by settlers and soldiers more recently. Our team has been in constant contact with him since the documentary and over the last 24 hours. We continue to monitor the situation. https://t.co/asEWKkVX5h
— Louis Theroux (@louistheroux) May 4, 2025
Teru told X that his team is in constant contact with Amro and “continues to monitor the situation.”
The incident echoes a similar case in March, when Hamdan Ballal, co-director of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, was attacked outside his home in Susiya, a village in the West Bank's Masafer Yatta region, and briefly detained. Ballal later claimed he was beaten while in custody and described the attack as “revenge for our film.”
An IDF spokesman denied Amro's claims in a statement, saying: “As the video clearly shows, the soldiers present in the Hebron area on May 3 were there to disperse a confrontation between Palestinian residents and Israeli civilians.”
