Oscar-winning actor Jon Voight came to film a movie in Samaria and met with the head of the Shomron Council, Yossi Dagan, and the director of the Samaria Film Foundation, Esther Alush.
Voight arrived with Chabad rabbis Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Kunin and Rabbi Chaim Kunin, who brought Voight on a tour of Samaria as part of the production of the film.
Witt arrived at Mitzpe Yosef on Har Bracha, which looks out over Joseph's tomb, and received wine from Har Bracha Winery. Dagan told Voight: "It is a great honor for us to host an important actor like you and more importantly - a friend of Israel."
Dagan referred to the prophecy of the prophet Jeremiah: "You will plant vineyards in the mountains of Samaria," and said to Voight: "What I hold in my hand is not just a bottle of wine - two thousand years ago the prophet Jeremiah promised that one day the people of Israel would return to their land, return to Samaria and plant vineyards. Over the course of a thousand years of Muslim conquest, other peoples managed to grow vines in the north, south but not on the lands of Samaria, and when the Jewish people returned here, to Samaria, 25 years ago when Jewish settlement returned to Samaria, they began planting vineyards, and suddenly began growing vines that today yield wine winning international awards, and considered one of the best in the world.
"When I give you wine from the Har Bracha settlement at the top of Mount Gerizim, it's not just a bottle of wine, you are actually holding a prophecy of Jeremiah that is being fulfilled right here," the head of the Shomron Council told the movie star.
Voight received the bottle of wine and teared up with excitement. "I do not understand why Judea and Samaria is called the West Bank, since it is clear when you look at the map that Samaria is the heart of the Land of Israel," he said.