There can hardly be anything more dangerous than crossing the border into a land peppered with Islamic jihadists. If they knew who Pierre Rehov was, they would kidnap or even kill him. But they look at the Arabic features and French passport, and they see a reporter who is pro-Palestinian at best, neutral at worst.
In reality, Pierre Rehov is an Algerian-born Jewish filmmaker determined to expose the truth about the Israeli-Arab conflict.
He has entered the Palestinian-controlled territories many times, posing as either a French tourist or reporter. On his undercover missions, he has spent time in the company of terrorists, including members of Hamas. He has captured rare video footage of Palestinian leaders advocating the eradication of the Jewish state and extermination of the Jewish people.
Rehov has dodged his fair share of dangers. Palestinian police harassed him during one trip to Bethlehem. In Iraq, while traveling with the U.S. 4th cavalry regiment, he narrowly eluded IEDs and rocket-propelled grenades on the road.
On one of his first undercover missions, in the city of Jenin, he was scheduled to meet with a prominent Islamic jihadist. His escorts, having put him into the back of a car, forced him to put his head between his legs so he could not see where they were taking him.
That was a moment of fear for Rehov, but he claims moments like that have been few and far between. After so many undercover incursions into hostile territory, he has grown accustomed to danger, not truly feeling it until it has passed.
"Talking about how dangerous it is – you don't feel it in the moment you're doing it," Rehov told WND in a phone interview. "Eventually, after a day of work, when you're back and safe you realize, 'Oh my God, I was there and people were firing at each other.'"
Rehov began building up courage at a young age. As a seven-year-old boy living in Algeria, he and his father nearly became victims of a Muslim grenade attack on a café. Young Pierre saw people exiting the café drenched in blood and with limbs missing. Another time, an explosive device went off at his school, killing 11 of his classmates.
As if it wasn't hard enough being a Frenchman at a time when Algeria was throwing off the yoke of French rule, Rehov was also Jewish. However, he didn't know this until he was six. He saw a graffiti message on the wall of the building where he and his family lived that read, "The French in a boat; the Arabs in a castle; and the Jews to be exterminated."
Young Pierre turned to his father and asked what a Jew was. His father told him Jews were a people who were always treated badly by the rest of the population, and that Pierre was a Jew. Once Pierre told his classmates he was Jewish, they began to deride him as a "dirty Jew."
When Pierre was nine, he, his mother and younger brother moved to France to escape an Algeria that would soon fall under Muslim rule.
However, it was not until 2000 that the fully grown Rehov found his calling in life. On October 6 he turned on the news and saw the images of the shooting of Mohammed al-Dura, a 12-year-old Palestinian boy whom Israel was accused of targeting. As a movie producer, Rehov knew there was something fishy about the images. He had a strong hunch this killing was another blood libel against the Jews.
"I started thinking and feeling that I had to do something," he told WND. "It was like a mission to me, and I felt very strongly about that mission."
So Rehov took off for the Holy Land to investigate the circumstances of al-Dura's death. His own research, combined with an IDF investigation, revealed the trajectory of Israeli gunfire and the position of the bullet holes in al-Dura's body were inconsistent. Rehov became convinced the Palestinians had killed al-Dura for propaganda purposes.
Since that time, Rehov has gone back into enemy territory numerous times to debunk what he sees as myths about the central conflict in the Middle East. His undercover expeditions have produced 10 gripping documentary films.
Rehov's two most recent films attempt to set the facts straight on who the true aggressor is in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "Beyond Deception Strategy" takes a look at the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement that is trying to delegitimize Israel by accusing it of being an "apartheid state."
"The BDS movement doesn't help the Palestinians; they are just trying to destroy Israel," Rehov told WND.
"Beyond Deception Strategy" features interviews with a broad array of members of Israeli society to show that Israel is in fact a vibrant democracy, not an apartheid state.
Rehov's other new release, "War Crimes in Gaza," takes place in the summer of 2014, when Israel was being blamed for protecting itself against Palestinian rocket attacks while trying not to hurt Palestinian civilians. Rehov sent teams into Gaza and other Palestinian territories to interview Israelis and members of Hamas and other terrorist groups to pin down which side was truly responsible for the war crimes.
"I was here during the attacks!" Rehov insisted "I was in Tel Aviv. We were seeing rockets every day, and the iron dome was working well, and I was seeing from my balcony the rockets blowing up in the sky. And in the meantime I could read on social media that there were no rockets being launched to us from Gaza."
In fact, Rehov said one of the biggest lies the international media tell about the Israeli-Arab conflict is that Israel is committing "ethnic cleansing" of the Palestinians.
"If you look at the numbers, it's a very, very poor job if Israel's aim is to exterminate the Palestinians because their numbers have almost multiplied by 10 since 1948," he told WND.
In "The Road to Jenin," Rehov reveals the lies of many "witnesses to the massacre" in the city of Jenin in 2002. His evidence reveals there was no massacre, as some Palestinians claimed.
"In "The Path to Darkness," Rehov explored several myths that have cropped up in the West due to society's embrace of moral relativism. His investigation took him to Japan, Iraq, Gaza and the West Bank. This was one of his more dangerous films, as he filmed close encounters with imams and even the families of suicide killers. He even documented the step-by-step religious brainwashing of a candidate for suicide-terrorism.
"Suicide Killers" focuses exclusively on the phenomenon of suicide bombings. Rehov managed to interview family members of terrorists and prisoners whose bombing attempts were thwarted. He even provided exclusive footage of a suicide bomber as he prepared for a mission.
"The Silent Exodus" tells the little-known story of the plight of the million Jews who, between 1946 and 1974, had to flee the Muslim countries their families had lived in for centuries.
Two of Rehov's films, "First Comes Saturday Then Comes Sunday" and "The Trojan Horse," explore the reasons for the little-reported Christian exodus from the Middle East in the past 20 years. The documentaries reveal the persecution Middle Eastern Christians face at the hands of their Muslim neighbors.
In "The Hostages of Hatred," Rehov tells the story of the Palestinian refugee men, women and children who have been used as pawns for over 50 years by Arab and Palestinian leaders, and by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which was created to supposedly take care of them. Using firsthand footage, Rehov shows the poverty the refugees are deliberately kept in, the nurtured hatred, and the false hope they are raised on.
"From the River to the Sea," which won Best Short Film at the Liberty Film Festival, is a revised version of "The Hostages of Hatred." It focuses on Palestinian leaders' manipulation of their own people as part of the effort to establish a nation of Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, effectively wiping Israel off the map.
Rehov told WND the myth of a nation of "Palestine" is another one of the biggest lies the media tell about the Israeli-Arab conflict.
"In the 1930s and '40s when you were telling an Arab who lived in Judeo-Samaria or in what is today Israel that he was a Palestinian, he felt insulted because only Jews were called Palestinians, and Arabs were called Arabs – that's it," Rehov explained.
He said it was not until 1964, with help from the Soviet Union, that the Palestinian people were "invented" with the founding of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
"I would say this is the number one lie [about the Israeli-Arab conflict], and unfortunately it's also promoted inside Israel itself, including by our own leaders," Rehov charged. "These people are a total invention."
Despite the constant quibbling over territory, Rehov said it's crucial to understand the Israeli-Arab conflict is ultimately not about territory or politics, but about religion. He said Muslim theology will not allow Muslims to ever accept that a territory that was once under Islamic rule is now under non-Islamic rule, which is why Muslims will never accept the legitimacy of the state of Israel.
"You have all these Muslims around the planet who dream of nothing but the extermination of the Jewish people and the disappearance of Israel because it is written in the Scriptures," the filmmaker said.
That is why Rehov is pessimistic about the prospects for peace in the region, at least if the two sides remain on their current trajectories. In his view, the Israelis don't know how to bring peace to the Middle East, and they don't have a willing peace partner, either.
"If you look at Mahmoud Abbas, his incitement is daily because that's the only way he can keep power, by promoting hatred of the Jews," Rehov declared. "So he's responsible, personally, for every single terror attack which is roiling the soil of Israel.
"Each time [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu wants to go back to the negotiation table, Abbas simply refuses to do so. So how can you make peace with somebody who just doesn't want to make peace?"
When Rehov speaks, his voice oozes with passion. He told WND he is appalled by injustice and tired of anti-Semitism, which has followed the Jewish people for their entire existence. Having lived in Israel for part of his adult life, he sees it as a good country that doesn’t deserve the scorn it receives from around the world, especially from Muslims.
However, he does not see any Israeli injustice against the Palestinians.
"I have very good friends among [the Palestinians], and they tell me, 'The only place in the world where we are treated properly, the only place in the world where we have a little bit of freedom and compassion, is Israel,'" Rehov relayed. "'The only people who really care for us are the Israelis. All the people around the world, they are not for us; they are against the Jews.'"
Rehov insisted that, despite his passion for Israel and the Jewish people, he strives to be objective when making his documentaries.
"Presenting the facts about the region doesn't mean that you have to make propaganda," he maintained. "I do not make propaganda. If one day I see something bad happening in the region at the hands of an Israeli soldier, I will feel sorry for it and I will report it as well. But most of the time when the media target Israel, they are just lying about it, and myself, I'm trying to report the facts because I know the facts are on the side of Israel.
"I believe in morality, I believe in ethics, and I cannot take the lies that try to diminish the reality and portray Israel as a horrible country, which is absolutely not the case."
Rehov does not plan on slowing down anytime soon. He told WND he plans to retire when he dies – "hopefully in, like, 60 to 70 years," he joked.
"It's a lifetime job," he said. "You cannot stop. I don't believe there's going to be peace anytime soon. I actually believe there's going to be a much bigger war – I believe in World War III."
He believes President Obama was foolish to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq, leaving a vacuum that ISIS has filled. Furthermore, he remains alarmed at the rising tide of anti-Semitism and belligerence in the Muslim world, which he sees as similar to the anti-Semitism that preceded the Holocaust.
So it seems likely Pierre Rehov will continue to cross the border from Israel into the Palestinian territories on his never-ending quest for the truth. How can he stop now, when so much is at stake? Besides, to hear the adventurous filmmaker tell it, it's not as if his work requires a great deal of bravery.
"It's like baby steps," Rehov explained. "One day you go on the other side of the border, the other day you go one kilometer ahead, the third day you go 10 kilometers, and here you are. You've been doing it and nothing has happened to you.
"So it's not like I'm brave and all of a sudden I jump from a helicopter with a machine gun trying to fight in the battle. I just did it step by step, baby steps, one at a time, and ended up being used to it."