Jerusalem (AFP)

After having triumphed with "The Affair" and "In Treatment", the scriptwriter Hagai Levi who propelled the series "made in Israel", defends his latest creation, a political chronicle on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict described as "anti-Semitic" by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Sitting in a Tel Aviv cafe, Hagai Levi glances furtively at his computer screen. "This is where I write," said the 56-year-old Israeli author, before shooting his electronic cigarette. The subdued light and warm colors of the walls give the place an almost "Hopperian" atmosphere.

The gentle and deep look, the creator of "Our Boys", released in recent months in Israel and the United States, says he "felt the need" to talk about what is happening in Israel. "It's complicated," he admits, sketching a smile.

The series, co-written for the American channel HBO with Tawfik Abou-Wael and Joseph Cedar and soon to be broadcast in France on Canal +, looks back on the death of a 16-year-old Arab in July 2014.

Three Jewish extremists had confessed to the murder of the young Palestinian, who was burnt alive in a wood in west Jerusalem.

- Controversy -

They had called for an act of revenge after the abduction and murder a few days earlier of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank occupied by members of Palestinian Hamas.

These events were a prelude to the devastating war of summer 2014 between Israel and the Islamist movement in Gaza.

The assassination of Eyal Yifrach (19), Naftali Frankel and Gilad Shaer (16) had aroused great emotion in their country. On the sidelines of their funeral, a hundred people had demonstrated with cries of "Death to the Arabs".

"I don't think these people really wanted to kill Arabs," said Hagai Levi. But it must be understood that the words "taken literally by psychologically unstable people" can lead to the worst.

Benjamin Netanyahu created the controversy by calling the series "anti-Semitic" and calling for a boycott of the audiovisual group Keshet, which co-produced it, and of channel 12, which broadcast it.

"Our Boys" devotes only a few minutes of documentary archives to the murder of the three Israelis and then focuses on that of the Arab boy, "a shocking fact, but rare," said Benjamin Netanyahu, ulcerated by a series which "tarnishes the 'image of Israel ".

"On the contrary," defends Hagai Levi, "the series shows how everything was put in place on the Israeli side to find and condemn those responsible for the death of Mohammed Abou Khdeir (...) but this requires waiting for the third episode".

Filmed in Hebrew and Arabic in a Jerusalem far from tourist clichés, "Our Boys" depicts according to him a "complex reality" in which "there are no bad guys and good guys".

Born in a religious kibbutz in central Israel, Hagai Levi discovered the magic of the big screen at 16 by being a projectionist in the small cinema of the kibbutz.

- Series pioneer -

He became a film critic before starting a career on Israeli television. At the end of the 1990s, he produced a first series, "Short Stories About Love", then devoted himself to writing and directing soap operas.

For the study of the sacred texts that marked his childhood, Hagai Levi replaced psychology, which he put in images in "Betipul", a series taking place in the office of a psychologist.

This first Israeli series adapted abroad, by the American chain HBO in 2008 (under the name "In Treatment"), has since conquered the world and opened the doors of Hollywood to Israeli authors.

France is currently preparing a remake piloted in part by the duo Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache, directors of the film Intouchables.

But it is the story of an extramarital relationship that propelled Hagai Levi to the rank of series genius: "The Affair", co-signed with Sarah Treem for the American channel Showtime, was awarded a Golden Globe in 2015.

"The couple and its dilemmas interest me particularly", slips the scriptwriter who devotes himself to the adaptation of "Scenes of married life", by the Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman.

Another project is close to his heart: the writing of a film on Etty Hillesum, a young Dutch Jew who died in Auschwitz. "Her diary changed my life," says Hagai Levi.

© 2020 AFP