THENEWYORKER,SEPTEMBER23, 2019 71
is a story about one boy, Mohammed,
and it is being told precisely because
his death struck so many Israelis as be-
yond belief. At the funeral of the Jew-
ish teen-agers, Netanyahu said, “A deep
and wide moral abyss separates us from
our enemies. They sanctify death, while
we sanctify life. They sanctify cruelty,
while we sanctify compassion.” Yet, in
the first episode, we watch a young ultra-
Orthodox man drift through a crowd
of protesters, clutching his guitar, ab-
sorbing the furious chants of “Death
to the Arabs!”
The series’ central emphasis is on how
easily such dehumanizing rhetoric can
sway vulnerable minds, a theme that
should feel uncomfortably relevant to
American viewers. Still, the show’s great-
est strength may be the way that it con-
tains its own critiques, letting contradic-
tory impulses smack against one another
without resolution. Even the most vil-
lainous character gets to make his case,
discounting what he perceives as the
weakling, watery mind-set of Ashke-
nazic liturgy: “On the one hand, on the
second hand, the third hand, the fourth
hand—sometimes you need to pick up
a sword and slaughter.” By the finale,
every concern that a critical viewer might
raise has been addressed. Characters argue
that Mohammed’s death is a “man bites
dog” exception; they debate the line be-
tween mental illness and fanaticism, the
immense power gulf between Israeli cit-
izens and Palestinians suffering under
the occupation, the fraught notion of
collective punishment. At its heart, this
is a show about the brutal economics of
empathy in a time of war: who gets it,
who deserves it, who is denied it.
J
ony Arbid and Ruba Blal Asfour are
immensely poignant as Moham-
med’s parents, whose sorrow and panic
pervade the first few episodes, in which
Mohammed disappears and then, once
his body is found, is proclaimed the
Dawn Martyr by fellow-Palestinians,
who pressure his parents not to lend
support to the Israeli trial. Shlomi
Elkabetz is coolly fascinating as the
soft-spoken Simon, a Moroccan-born
agent in the Shabak’s Jewish Unit, which
investigates crimes perpetrated by Jews,
and who comes from the same Sephar-
dic ultra-Orthodox background as the
murder suspects. In later episodes, Noa
Koler is a standout as the prickly, com-
plex Dvora, a psychiatrist to the ultra-
Orthodox community, who is faced
with a set of ethical quandaries: What
is her obligation to a mentally fragile
patient under investigation? To her
country? To the community she serves?
Simon and Dvora are both riveting
figures, different kinds of detectives who
use emotional intuition to arrive at differ-
ent notions of justice. They are also com-
posite characters, based on the writers’
interviews with multiple agents and psy-
chiatrists. That’s a complicated ethical
choice of its own. But it ends up being
effective, freeing the series to feel au-
thentic without being literally true, en-
abling it to enter into intimate, manip-
ulative relationships—between agents
and suspects, shrinks and patients, and,
crucially, among participants in the locked
universe of ultra-Orthodox settlers.
The show covers a huge amount of
ground, tracing the crime, the police
and political response, and, finally, the
trial. Ironically, given Netanyahu’s at-
tacks on the media, “Our Boys” is espe-
cially damning toward television news,
which let rumors—that Mohammed
was gay, among others—air unchecked.
“This murder will be remembered as an
honor killing forever. ‘Arabs killed a fag,
that’s how it is,’” the man who planted
the story says, smirking. “That’s how you
form public opinion.”
In the fifth episode, Simon goes un-
dercover among the prime suspects, the
narcissistic owner of a Jerusalem eye-
glass shop and his nephews, all of them
related to a prominent ultra-Orthodox
rabbi. The cops bug their houses, tap
phones, and monitor alleyways from
the sky. Simon—using his family knowl-
edge of Mizrahi manners—embeds with
them, disguised as a reserve-duty sol-
dier. He gets invited to Shabbat din-
ner; he bonds with a local rabbi. He’s
particularly drawn to Avishai, the six-
teen-year-old boy we glimpsed in ear-
lier episodes, weeping about the lost
teen-agers, floating through the pro-
tests with his guitar.
A failed Yeshiva student who is
paralyzed by O.C.D. and depression,
Avishai is stooped and silent. “I know
his type,” Simon assures the other agents,
pegging the boy, initially, as “a leaf in the
wind,” with “zero capacity for violence.”
Even once the truth emerges about hisrole in Mohammed’s kidnapping, and
his family becomes anathema in Israel,
his community privately defends him
and his cousin. Simon’s own brother ar-
gues, “They’re good kids who got dragged
into this by their crazy uncle.”
Avishai, who is played with a disci-
plined alienation by Adam Gabay, be-
comes the most daring narrative gam-
bit in “Our Boys.” It’s not hard to relate
to the difficult decision-making of a
brilliant detective, grieving parents, or
a caring psychiatrist. It’s much harder
to consider the inner life of a sixteen-
year-old who kidnaps a boy because he
is Muslim. In the seventh episode, we
are forced to inhabit Avishai’s unhappy
head, as he confesses, stuttering, to the
acts that led to the crime. Theatrical ed-
iting blurs past and present: Simon
stands at a gas pump, as we see the boys
pour gasoline into soda bottles, in flash-
back. For a moment, I nearly jumped
ship, unwilling to experience the queasy
blend of sympathy and revulsion that
the moment demands. But Avishai’s
story is challenging in a meaningful way,
requiring something richer than empa-
thy—something more like comprehen-
sion. The definition of modern terror-
ism that Simon winds up articulating
is the one that the show wants us to
face: not “cells” or blueprints but “some-
one with mental issues, on the margins,
somewhat racist, who reads ‘Death to
Arabs’ or ‘Death to Jews’ on Facebook
and goes out and kills someone.” The
show’s title has a hidden meaning: teen-
agers like Avishai are “our boys,” too.
In the end, “Our Boys” is simply not
interested in liberal hand-wringing, or
in what remains of the left in Israel; its
interest is in confronting head on the
taboo subject of what people say in pri-
vate, when questions of security over-
ride all else. During Shabbat dinner, an
ultra-Orthodox rabbi and his guest, a
Russian mathematician, argue that there
is, in fact, a Biblical justification for this
kind of revenge—and that, strategically
speaking, to defeat an irrational enemy
you must be just as crazy. “That is why,
mathematically, one burned Arab boy is
very good,” the guest argues. “For Jews.”
A Shabak agent describes those words
as “incitement.” “What incitement?”
Simon says, in a weary tone. “My brother
could have said the same thing. So could
his kids and everyone I know.”