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ple. And many of those people — in-
cluding Israeli counterterrorism
agents and Abu Khdeir’s parents
— were consulted to make the pro-
duction as accurate as possible.
The time and energy devoted to
the series shows. “Our Boys” is the
rare production out of Israel and
the occupied territories to offer
viewers multiple perspectives in a
region violently divided by ques-
tions of statehood, human rights
and social equality. And the arrival
of “Our Boys” on American televi-
sion couldn’t be more timely. The
miniseries debuted Aug. 12, days
before Israel’s decision to bar the
United States’ first two Muslim
congresswomen from entering the
country because of their support
for the global Palestinian rights
movement, Boycott, Divestment
and Sanctions.
Many Republicans, including
President Trump, labeled the
women “anti-Semitic” for criticiz-
ing Israel’s treatment of Palestin-
ians. Democrats were split. Sup-
porters of Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-
Mich.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.)
decried the attacks on the lawmak-
ers as racist: “It is disgusting that a
bigot like Trump is attacking @Ra-
shidaTlaib and @IlhanMN in this
way,” tweeted Sen. Bernie Sanders.
“Opposing Netanyahu’s policies is
not ‘hating the Jewish people.’ We
must stand together against those
who promote hatred and racism in
Israel, Palestine, the U.S. and ev-
erywhere.”
Though Israel later told Pal-
estinian American Tlaib that she’d
be allowed to visit her elderly
grandmother on the West Bank if
she agreed to Israeli restrictions
during her visit, the Michigan law-
maker declined. During a press
conference Monday, a teary-eyed
Tlaib explained that her 90-year-
old grandmother advised her not
to make the trip if it meant suc-
cumbing to the restrictions.
The torrent of news laid bare
the conflict’s reverberations in the
U.S. and the thicket of complex-
ities it brings. It was never more ev-
ident than this week, when Trump
accused American Jews of disloy-
alty if they voted for Democrats,
unleashing a wave of rebuke for us-
ing language reminiscent of “dual
loyalty” accusations faced by Ger-
man Jews in the Nazi era. Rather
than apologize, Trump thanked a
conspiracy theorist the next day on
Twitter for saying Israeli Jews love
the president “like he’s the King of
Israel” and again accused Ameri-
can Jews of disloyalty, this time to
Israel and Jewish people, if they
voted for Democrats.
Arguments over who’s right or
wrong, who’s more racist and
which side truly deserves the trust
of the American people are more
tangled than ever. Certainly, old
identifiers, such as one’s religion,
national origin or political affilia-
tion, are less reliable predictors of
one’s voting choices.
The team behind “Our Boys”
understood the firestorm they’d be
stepping into when they chose a
particularly fraught and fresh
chapter of Middle East history as
the subject of their series.
During an interview on a recent
visit to Los Angeles, they consult
one another in Arabic and Hebrew,
searching for the best words in
English to describe the project’s
complications.
It was a challenge creating an
honest, cohesive narrative that
also depicted the separate reality
of each community, since division
and mistrust are key factors in Is-
raeli-Palestinian relations.
Levi recalls the first time the
predominantly Jewish team metAbu Khdeir’s parents: “His father,
Hussein, only spoke. He has a smile
on his face all the time. He’s very
kind. But his mother, Suha, didn’t
speak at all. She looked at us all
with this look that could kill. The
way she was staring at us, it was
chilling. That was hard.”
“Then he whispered to her and
pointed to me and said, ‘That’s the
Palestinian guy ... and he’s going to
tell our story,’ ” Abu Wael jumps in.
“The relief on her face, you could
see it.”
“And the relief on our faces,”Cedar adds.
Filmed in Israel, the series stars
Shlomi Elkabetz as Simon (the
show’s only fictional major charac-
ter), an agent with the Jewish Divi-
sion of the Israel Security Agency,
also known as the Shin Bet. He be-
longs to a unit of the secret service
responsible for investigating sus-
pected terrorism by Jewish ex-
tremists.
Jony Arbid and Ruba Blal As-
four portray the grieving father
and mother, respectively, of the
slain Mohammed.Adam Gabay plays Avishay El-
baz, an aimless yeshiva student
swept up in the fervor to avenge
the murder of the three Jewish
students. His story is explored with
a depth and compassion not
often afforded to convicted mur-
derers.
“In portraying the killer, we
were trying to understand him,”
says Avi Nir, CEO of Keshet Media
Group. “We were trying to identify
with him, even though that pre-
sents another opportunity for peo-
ple to say, ‘What the ... is this? He’s
a killer! There’s so many angles
that will rile people. They have to
face it, though. This is the main
reason we did the series.”
“Our Boys” is intense and mov-
ing, but it’s not painful to watch.
The personal pain of the charac-
ters is folded into a dynamic who-
dunit that grows more intriguing
as it moves through the interroga-
tion rooms of Israeli law enforce-
ment, the rumor mill of social me-
dia, the streets of Arab East
Jerusalem and the Jewish settle-
ments of West Jerusalem and the
West Bank.
Elkabetz, like most of the team,
felt a responsibility to honor the
stories of the real people depicted
in the series but not at the expense
of a candid, compelling tale that
challenges just about every extant
narrative of what happened in
summer 2014.
“It’s a huge responsibility when
you do a series about real events
and real people,” he says. “All those
people, whether they cooperate or
not with the creators of the show,
they’re asking, ‘Will this series give
me justice?’ ”ADAM GABAYplays a yeshiva student swept up in the wave of vengeance for the deaths of three Jewish students in the HBO limited series “Our Boys.”
Ran MendelsonHBO‘Our Boys’ takes timely tack
[‘Our Boys,’from E1]
SHLOMI ELKABETZ, right, with Tzahi Grad, plays the series’ only fictional major character, a Shin Bet investigator.Ran MendelsonHBOTAWFIKAbu Wael, left, Elkabetz and Joseph Cedar at the summer TV Critics Assn. Press Tour.Amy SussmanGetty Images