‘Our Boys’ Creator Hagai Levi Arrested Briefly At Israeli Protest
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Our Boys creator Hagai Levi has said he was arrested briefly during a protest in Tel Aviv on Thursday.
Following his return from the Series Mania confab, Levi attended a protest against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s planned overhaul of the Israeli judicial system during what was dubbed “rage day.” Many such protests have broken out across the country over the past few weeks.
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Levi said people started being arrested for standing in the road instead of sidewalks and he was stopped by police after stepping down from the sidewalk onto the street. According to Levi, he was grabbed by police and walked into a prisoners truck where he was detained in an arrest cell for a couple of hours and had his rights read to him.
Levi and the other prisoners were driven to an unknown location and told to exit the vehicle on condition of leaving the area, he said.
“I saw some violent arrests, was filming them with my iPhone and the police noticed and didn’t like it,” added Levi. “This wasn’t a big protest, maybe a couple of hundred people, but the police were impatient after a long day.” Deadline has seen video footage and has reached out to the Israeli police force.
Levi is the creator of HBO/Keshet Studios’ Our Boys, which, in 2019, was the subject of a boycott call from Netanyahu, who claimed it was Anti-Semitic. The mini-series dramatized the investigation into the killing of a Palestinian teenager following the kidnapping and killing of three Jewish teenagers by Hamas militants in 2014.
Censorship by stealth
Protests have broken out across Israel since Netanyahu became Prime Minister for a fourth time in December 2022, at which point he assembled the nation’s most right-wing government in its short history, with plans to overhaul the judicial system.
Israeli creatives have been heavily involved with the protests and Levi was with Euphoria creator Ron Leshem at Series Mania to discuss the new government’s threats to culture.
“I come to Series Mania every year but this year I felt the only thing I could do was talk about the situation [in Israel],” Levi told Deadline on Wednesday, prior to his arrest. “In the landscape we are seeing right now, Our Boys would never have been financed or broadcasted.”
Levi and Leshem spotlighted the way in which Netanyahu’s government is exhibiting signs of censorship by stealth, mainly by withdrawing public funding and investment for networks who won’t toe the party line, while introducing new funds for pro-government projects.
A short-lived idea to have creatives sign a loyalty clause to the Israeli government was scotched, as was the heavily-criticized plan to close public broadcaster Kan 11, while the recent Shomron (Samaria/West Bank) Film Fund was slammed by 250 Israeli filmmakers for “whitewashing the [Palestinian] occupation.”
Levi and Leshem are now hoping the global industry will recognize the plight faced by many Israeli creatives, coming as Netanyahu headed to London to meet UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, a move that was met with more protests on UK streets.
“There is always that moment when a bully who has been inciting violence for 20 years suddenly starts controlling the police and that moment has now happened,” said Leshem of Netanyahu’s actions.
“Criminals have taken over democratically and are crushing democracy. We feel on the verge of being the next Yugoslavia.”
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