Tel Aviv.

As Israel grows more nationalist,

Tel Aviv is the last stronghold

of our nation's liberals.

It is a supercool cosmopolitan city

and the place I call home.

In 2016, I decided to say goodbye to Tel Aviv

and spend the summer with the Israelis

that I disagree with the most: the settlers.

Since Israel's ongoing military occupation

of the West Bank that started in 1967,

Jewish settlers have moved to the Palestinian territories

into settlements that are illegal,

according to the international law.

As Israeli society polarizes around views

of the occupation, I found myself increasingly

curious about Israelis my age who

grew up in those settlements, who

were born into this reality.

I ended up in one of the oldest Israeli settlements,

called Tekoa, which was founded in 1977.

About an hour drive from Tel Aviv,

it is a world apart, isolated in the Judean hills

and surrounded by Palestinian villages.

I rented a small apartment on the corner of Hospitality

Road and Joy Street.

And I thought to myself, these are two things

I'll definitely need here.

After all, it's not every day that a liberal from Tel Aviv

moves to a settlement.

Once I settled in, to make myself feel more at home,

I set up a small cafe and waited for company.

Well, apparently coffee is not in demand in Tekoa,

as well as a liberal with three cameras.

For a while, it seemed like the only locals

who visited my table were flies, a cat, and my only

new friend in town, Matanya.

But being stubborn eventually paid off.

Unlike Tekoa, which is considered

a moderate settlement, the Jewish settlement

in the Palestinian city of Hebron

is the most extremist of all, where

extreme settlers live in the midst

of a large Palestinian city.

Moriya grew up there.

It seems like we grew up in totally different worlds.

While I knew Palestinians come in and out of the settlements

every day to work, building more of the buildings

that they will never be allowed to live in,

seeing them line up to enter settlements

that represent their oppression with my own eyes

was very unsettling.

Her uncensored lack of political correctness

definitely shocked me, but also

made me want to hear more.

Despite a peace and love and the hippie vibe of Tekoa,

sometimes the complexity of the tension

here slaps you in the face.

My next door neighbor's family was

attacked in the shooting ambush, killing her father,

and leaving her mother and two siblings wounded.

Her cry and weep across our shared wall

when she first got the message tore my heart apart.

In January 2016, a Palestinian teenager

stabbed Tekoa resident Michal Froman

at the local thrift shop.

She was four months pregnant at the time.

Most of the people my age I chatted with

were honest about the negative effect of the settlements

on Palestinians, who are repressed

as long as they are occupied.

I wondered how they still choose to live here.

On my last day in Tekoa, Matanya

stopped by for a farewell chat.

[music]