Our Boys is the sort of thing many people will feel they ought to try and see, rather than something that they actually want to watch. Well, I’m happy to report, though perfectly understandable given its subject matter, that reticence is entirely unwarranted.
Co-created by the Israeli showrunner Hagai Levi, who’d previously made In Treatment, and the Palestinian writer, Tawfik Abu-Wael, Our Boys was picked up and shown on HBO, and was met by almost universal acclaim.
Predictably, hardliners on either side of the Israeli Arab divide were equally furious, offended and outraged. Which, needless to say, strongly suggests the show hits absolutely the right note.
The story that the drama depicts takes place at a very specific moment in time. Three Jewish boys have been kidnapped and murdered by Palestinians, but Our Boys begins in the immediate aftermath of that horrific event.
In other words, it doesn’t focus on the deaths of the three Israelis, but on the kidnapping, killing and burning of the Palestinian boy that a trio of fanatical Israelis take their revenge on.
What’s so gripping and endlessly fascinating about the show is the way it delineates each of the layers that sub-divide both sets of communities. Giving each and every faction its own weight, and its characters a chance to explain themselves from their points of view.
Despite focusing on two very narrow tracts of land on either side of what is effectively the current boarder, each community is endlessly split within its own walls. So there is the divide amongst the “settlers”, between the Ashkenazim and the Mizrahim.
And then between the more, and the less pious, in both of those groups. And, amongst that former group, between those who are more peaceably inclined, and those who feel that enough is enough, and an eye demands an eye, as the bible clearly states.
Likewise, amongst the Palestinians, the boy’s father wants to press the Israeli police for justice and attend the court proceedings that follow, once the perpetrators have been apprehended. But all that does, he is angrily told, is to acknowledge the Israeli’s right to jurisdiction over them, and to absolve them of the continued and perpetual mistreatment that the Palestinian people are forever the subject of at their hands.
What’s so depressing, and of course so familiar for anyone who’s ever spent any time north of Dundalk, is that, despite all these subtle and nuanced distinctions, absolutely every discussion, conversation, argument and fight ends up being about one thing. Either you’re with us, or you’re with them. Which is as true for the Israelis as it is for the Palestinians.
Ultimately, the show triumphs by refusing not merely to take sides, but to in any way judge. The result is a series that is continually illuminating and endlessly gripping.
You can see the trailer to HBO’s Our Boys here. And you can read the slightly longer appraisal in Harretz, the admittedly liberal (in the context of Israeli politics) journal here
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