In 2014, a pair of crimes shocked Israelis and Palestinians. The first was the abduction and murder of three Israeli boys by a Hamas-linked group. Then there was an act of reprisal—the torture, burning, and murder of a Palestinian teen-ager named Mohammed Abu Khdeir—by Israeli right-wing extremists. Even by the standards of this conflict, the killings were shocking. 

“Our Boys,” a co-production of HBO and the Israeli Keshet Studios, examines the forces that led to Abu Khdeir’s killing. It is not for the faint of heart, David Remnick says, but the series is as complex and deep a portrayal of the conflict as he has ever seen. Remnick spoke with two of the creators: Hagai Levi, an Israeli Jew, and Tawfiq Abu Wael, a Palestinian living in Israel. Abu Wael tells Remnick why he resisted pressure from activists not to participate in an Israeli production.