David Shulman and Margaret Olin

‘It Is for the Truth that We are Fighting’: In Israel, Anti-Government, Anti-Coup Protests Persist

In photos, a movement that has captured ‘half of Israel.’

So far, there is no doubt that we are winning. We will stop the thugs and killers of this so-called government in their tracks.

I don’t much like demonstrations. Never liked them. I feel foolish standing there, holding up a sign. It’s rare for me even to carry a sign. I like direct action, in the field, like with the shepherds. But for the last 16 weeks, like everyone I know, I’ve been in the protests—the big ones, always on Saturday night (last week there were 400,000 demonstrators throughout the country), and the smaller, episodic ones that happen every day, at dozens of sites.

You can’t walk past the president’s house without encountering a protest by someone or other – reserve soldiers, feminists, economists, academics, law professors, teachers, Holocaust survivors – against the government. Israel – anyway, half of Israel – is stirring awake after half a century of moribund slumber.

Marching along last night, I was, as usual, tormented by the mystery of human evil – by the depravity that has no bottom, that plagues us, starting at the top.

I wasn’t alone. Thousands surrounded me, enveloping me in a gritty hope. In spite of all their differences, all of them have come together, here in Jerusalem, in Tel Aviv, New York, New Haven, and god knows where, carrying signs.

From the radical faction, my people:

This week is Memorial Day for the fallen, and the signs of the bereaved families are painful to see.

In Photos: In Palestine’s Ar-Rakiz Lie the Remnants of Lives Destroyed by Israeli Soldiers

Sometimes reality reveals itself in a few stark images.

A while ago we were back in Ar-Rakiz, the village where Harun was shot by a soldier and nearly killed. He is paralysed from the neck down. The doctors recently had to amputate one leg because it got infected. His consciousness is, at best, murky. He hardly speaks anymore. The rest of his body is also covered with pressure ulcers. After many months in hospital, he now lives in his parents’ home, in a cave in the village. The parents are exhausted. There is no caretaker or helper, and of course, the army refused to take any responsibility for the shooting, so there has been no compensation.

Harun is Palestinian and doesn’t count.

The soldier who shot him was sent to Ar-Rakiz, along with several others, by Israeli settlers.

We know Harun and the family and Ar-Rakiz. Since our visit in January, when Harun was brought to Ar-Rakiz from the room in Yata where he was receiving basic care, his condition has deteriorated markedly. At that time it was still possible to communicate with him in a limited way. Now it’s almost impossible.

We came this time, as before, to be with him and his parents, to offer whatever words of comfort we could muster. We embraced Rasmi, Harun’s father. Then the soldiers came.

Ar-Rakiz sits on a steep hill overlooking a rocky wadi. One reaches it from above the homes. As you walk downhill to the cave, you pass the ruins of several houses demolished by the army.

Demolitions are a regular event in Ar-Rakiz, like in the rest of South Hebron. That day we were there the soldiers – maybe six or seven of them, armed to the teeth – parked their heavy jeep on the crest. Rasmi went up the hill to talk to them.

So that’s what we did. It wasn’t so easy. He’s 25 years old and very heavy. Three of us – two young men from the family and me – carried him up the slope in his wheelchair. Harun was wrapped in a blanket and more or less unconscious. I slipped a couple of times on the gravel, since I was walking backwards, holding on to the front of the wheelchair. Finally we got to the ridge near the top of the hill.

The officer said, “This is a Closed Military Zone. You have to leave right now. If you don’t move, we’ll arrest you.” I asked him if he knew Harun’s story and could understand why we were there. No, he didn’t know, and he had his orders. I gave him a brief summary. The army, I said, destroyed Harun’s life for nothing. Look at him now.

I thought the officer was not unmoved by the story, but I wasn’t sure. We stood there for a while, looking at one another. Then he again threatened to arrest us and again ordered us to leave. We very slowly went farther up the hill, leaving Harun with his family, and then down through the cypress and olive trees into the next valley, the soldiers watching us all the time, since we were obviously a danger to the State of Israel.

Jews shouldn’t come to comfort Palestinians or share their sorrow. That’s one very good reason to have a Closed Military Zone.

The order, incidentally, was totally illegal. We know all there is to know about Closed Military Zones. But there is no longer any court in Israel that will hold the army to the law. Keep in mind that someone gave the soldiers their orders.

Our descent into the valley was not easy, we slid and stumbled over the rocks; Peg was too busy navigating her way to take pictures until we reached the bottom.

As I was trying to get Harun, barely alive, unable to move, legless and wordless, up that hill to show him to the soldiers, I was thinking: This can’t be real. When you have that sort of thought, you know it’s about something real, like human evil.

This week, among many other bad incidents, a middle-aged Israeli peace activist who was picking olives with Palestinians was savagely attacked by a Jewish settler. The activist was badly wounded and eventually evacuated to hospital, where the police turned up and arrested him on some concocted charge. Needless to say, the settler thug was not pursued or arrested. I think the police in the territories teach their new recruits the operative rule: Whatever else you do, strive to arrest the innocent.

At Twaneh, three activists, people we know, were accompanying schoolchildren from Tuba home from school. Another crazed settler attacked them, repeatedly, on the path. Soldiers came and, oblivious to the settler, arrested the activists. They were guilty of trying to protect young children from harm – not theoretical harm (see our earlier post about Twaneh).

Welcome to the Altneuland of Israel.

All photographs by Margaret Olin.

David Shulman is an Indologist and an authority on the languages of India. A professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, he is an activist in Ta’ayush, Arab-Jewish Partnership. His latest book is More Than Real: A History of the Imagination in South India, published in April 2015.

This article was originally published on Touching Photographs. Read it here.

Photo Essay: Dead Sheep in the Jordan Valley

David Shulman depicts the routine harassment faced by Palestinian shepherds and farmers at the fields and grazing grounds near Ein Sukut.

Wednesday seems to be the day the settler has set aside for harassing Palestinian shepherds. That’s what Ahmad says, and he should know. Last Wednesday, October 14, it ended in murder.

We know his name, and we may even have his picture. Ahmad can identify him, since Ahmad saw him drive his ATV into the midst of the herd of sheep, scattering them in every direction. Not once but many times, for some 20 awful minutes. Finally, Ahmad says, the settler ran over one of the sheep. It took her some time to die. Arik, summoned by phone, arrived quickly; he and Ahmad picked her up and got her to a vet, who took one look at her and said there was nothing he could do. Arik has written about what he saw in her eyes as life slipped away, as you may read here.

Photo: Michael Botstein

Today Ahmad seems nervous, scared, with good reason. He wants us near him. These are the last days in the year that Ahmad and his almost-deaf father Husain will be staying in their tents in the flat stretch close to the natural spring and pools called Ein Sukut. On Sunday they will move up the mountain ridge to Farisiyya, for the rainy months. They think of Farisiyya as their true home. Seasonal migrations are a normal part of Bedouin life in the Jordan Valley, and elsewhere. In the past, Farisiyya has been targeted by the army for massive demolitions.

The pools are surrounded by thick bulrushes, like in the story of Moses; hidden jewels of cool green water very close to the Jordanian border. The access roads take you past fenced-off dusty plots of land with signs warning you not to enter because there are still active land-mines there. I’ve bathed in Ein Sukut after hot days on the hills with the shepherds.

Sometimes young hikers, Israelis, many of them ultra-orthodox, turn up to swim. When I was last there, maybe four years ago, Palestinian kids were also bathing – a kind of utopian mix of young people whose nationalities didn’t matter. I didn’t see any today.

Ein Sukut, 2010. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

There was a time – from 1997 on – when Ein Sukut was included in a large Closed Military Zone, like much of the land in the Jordan Valley. In practice, significant chunks of privately owned Palestinian land were handed over to the settlers. In 2002, the CMZ in this area was reduced in size, but access to the spring remained restricted mainly to Jews. The idea was clearly to empty Ein Sukut and its surrounding fields of Palestinians.

In 2015, Palestinian landowners appealed to the Supreme Court to return the stolen lands, and the State announced that it intended to abolish the CMZ and to come to an agreement with the Palestinian landowners. The Court ruled in support of this decision in January 2020. For the last four years or so, the pools of Ein Sukut have been a popular destination, especially in summer, for all kinds of people, as I saw with my own eyes.

Ein Sukut, 2020. Photo: Rachel Afek, Machsom Watch

So can Palestinian shepherds and farmers now freely access their fields and grazing grounds near Ein Sukut and also bathe in the spring? Not quite. There are ongoing, routine attempts by settlers, often backed up by soldiers, to keep Palestinians away from those lands. For an Israeli settler working in the fields of Ein Sukut, the Supreme Court is a distant, nebulous entity.

For several years we have chronicled in these pages the violent harassment that the shepherds here have received: detentions, attacks on their homes and on their water supply, some of them reprisals for daring to work with us to recover rights to their land [see here, here, and here].

Photo: David Shulman

We leave Ariel and David B. with Ahmad, Husain and the sheep, while Arik and I set off in search of the sheep-killer. Back and forth on those gravel roads, the mine-fields on either side. We see Palestinian farmers and settler farmers at work in their respective fields. And we find the ATV. But by the time we get close enough for good pictures, the killer has gone home; someone else is driving the vehicle. We talk to him for a while. He confirms the verbal picture Ahmad had given Arik.

By now there’s probably enough evidence to file a complaint with the police, and there’s at least a chance they won’t simply ignore it. We won’t let them. I think the dead sheep deserves justice, if not for her sake then for ours, for the tattered dignity of being human. In the end, it always comes down to this – to the life of one, singular, irreplaceable, innocent sheep or goat, one Palestinian man or woman, one child.

Around noon the police show up, probably summoned by the settlers. No policeman makes rounds in the remote sands of Ein Sukut. They take our ID cards, they listen to the story we have to tell. If you try hard, you might even be able to imagine one of the them, an affable young man, feeling an unanticipated twitch of empathy. They tell us what we already know, that we can file the complaint in Ariel or at Hizmeh. They leave.

Photo: David Shulman

It’s too hot for more grazing. We follow Ahmad to the tents; Husain will bring back the herd. Ahmad’s mother is sitting in immoveable dignity on a mat, watching the day trickle past. Outside, I see the most ravishing laundry line in the world outlined against the great ridge to the west, the hills of the Judean desert.

Coffee is served in tiny paper cups. One by one, children filter back from their school. I soon lose count of how many there are – maybe one for every age between, say, three and ten? The grandmother tells us, in a grandmotherly manner, that they are exhausted from the long walk home – many miles, in the heat. One of them is curious about us, we who have dropped in from the moon. He proudly tells me his name: Yusuf.

Photo: David Shulman

Arik speaks to the lawyer who will handle the case of the murdered sheep. We take our leave. Arik says to Ahmad as we get up, “Do you need me to come tomorrow? I’m not sure I can.” Ahmad says, “Please come on Friday.”

It’s hard to leave – always. The dangers they face never go away. They are our friends. We can’t always protect them. And there are the more mundane problems too. I want to bring Husain to a good audiologist in Jericho or some other city in the territories. I want him to have his hearing tested so we can get him a hearing aid. He can still hear a little if you’re close to him; he points to his ears and says, with a gesture of despair, or maybe resignation: al-sama’a – “My hearing is bad.” I think we could change that. I’m not sure how we’ll manage it, but we’ll find a way.

Photo: David Shulman

David Shulman is an Indologist and an authority on the languages of India. A Professor Emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, he is an activist in Ta’ayush, Arab-Jewish Partnership.

This article was originally published on Touching Photographs. Read the original article here.

Ein Rashash: A Typical West Bank Morning Under Illegal Israeli Occupation

Things have changed in Rashshash since violent settlers attacked the police – first on November 7, when the police halted construction at an illegal outpost called Ma’oz Esther.

Editors’ note: With the Trump administration reversing the US’s position and declaring that Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory are not a violation of international law, we are publishing this account by two Israeli peace activists of the daily impact that this illegal settlement has on the lives of the Palestinian people.

We are three – Guy, Nina and me. We reach Rashshash with the dawn. Tea is served. How are things? “Settlers at our throat every day.”

Photo: David Shulman, 2019

Ra’id is already out on the hills with his herd. We set off to join him, crossing the wadi, then climbing the steep slope. Here is a young boy on his donkey, coming home. “Good morning,” we say. “Careful,” he says, “they have been beating people up.” He’s scared.

Photo: David Shulman, 2019

6:30. Guy calls the army “war room” that is situated not far away. He speaks to the duty officer in a new tone. These days, soldiers and police may be a little more amenable to our phone calls. “My name is Guy Hircefeld, I’m a human rights activist. We are at Rashshash with the Palestinian shepherds. Judging from the last few days, there is a real possibility of a clash with settlers from the outpost that calls itself ‘Angels of Peace.’ I suggest you send some soldiers now.”

Photo: David Shulman, 2019

Things have changed here, a little, since violent settlers began attacking the police – first on November 7, when the police halted construction at an illegal outpost called Ma’oz Esther, not far from ‘Ein Rashshash; then this past weekend, when settlers in Yitzhar in the northern West Bank wounded three policemen who came to arrest a fugitive settler banned from being there.

Yitzhar is one of the more violent places on the planet, as its Palestinian neighbors can tell you. I know it from the days when settler thugs drove out the entire population of the adjacent village of Yanun, and we brought the villagers back and stayed with them for weeks to keep them safe. This time, on Sunday, two hundred Yitzhar settlers fought the police with stones, bottles of paint, and whatever else came to hand.*

Also read: Illegal Outposts and Struggles for Water: A Day in Palestine

But no soldiers come to Rashshash so early, and ten minutes after that call we see three settlers from the outpost and their herd of sheep coming toward us. One of them is on horseback. He rides off to wreak havoc with another herd, closer to the Rashshash tents. The other two – they are adolescents, maybe 15 or 16, religious, twisted fringes flapping on their thighs, sun-caps instead of skull-caps, long ear-locks, cellphones – stride straight into the Palestinian herd, scattering it in all directions. They seem indifferent to their own herd, left far behind – the main thing is to terrorise the Palestinians, sheep and shepherd. Thus: chaos.

Settler-shepherds of the “Angels of Peace” outpost and elsewhere in the West Bank straightforwardly assert that they herd sheep in order to grab land.

They’re making a lot of noise, screaming at the sheep, and one of them – we’ll call him Goldilocks, because he has very long blonde hair, like a hippie of yore, rather out of context – has a loudspeaker that’s blaring raucous music, and waving the loudspeaker in his hands he literally starts dancing his way through the herd, enjoying every moment, jumping, twirling, hopping, running from stone to stone. The sheep don’t like it.

Both the settler boys are also yelling at us. Ra’id and the remnants of the herd are fleeing far downslope, toward the Valley. Nina manages to catch up with them and stays close, protecting them, while violence unfurls higher up.

Also read: In Al-Hamme, Palestinian Shepherds Are Being Driven Away

Guy is running after the young thugs, who are still dispersing the sheep; he moves fast, almost beyond belief, because the whole slope is nothing but hard jagged loops of rock and it’s almost impossible not to stumble and fall. I can’t keep up with him, but I’m trying. Then I see, maybe 30 meters away, how Goldilocks smashes into him, the dance now reduced to its vital core of hate.

I rush toward him, trying hard not to lose my footing on the rocks, and I see Goldilocks kick Guy’s feet out from under him as he topples Guy onto a long slab of stone, and for the three or four minutes it takes me to reach them Goldilocks is pummeling Guy with his fists and kicking him without pause, and Guy is caught but not hitting back, until finally Goldilocks lets go and backs off.

I wish I had used those minutes to photograph it. It would have made a difference.

Guy gets to his feet. He is bleeding from the nose, and he has taken bad hits on his back and side. Photo: Still from video by David Shulman

Goldilocks is yelling loudly, something he thinks everyone, ovine and human, should know: “Guy attacked me.” He calls his friend, still busy with the sheep, and he calls Elchanan, the big guy in the outpost, with his happy news. Over and over again. “You’re the one who attacked,” I say, “I saw it all.”

“You’re a liar,” says Goldilocks. Photo: Still from video by David Shulman

“You’re the liar,” says I. So it goes. Guy’s phone rings. It’s his daughter. “Abba, can you pick me up today after school?”

Then, from the mouths of these not-yet-men, maybe never-to-be-men, worthy of the name, the usual curses and insults and vicious words are spit out in a steady stream. Always the same trite, repetitive, infinitely impoverished thoughts, if you can call them thoughts. After a while, disgusted, furious, I say to them: “Have you ever heard that God said, ‘Thou shalt not steal’? It’s in the text.” “Oh,” one says, “so you agree that these are the texts.”

Also read: Photo Essay: A Yom Kippur Meditation

“Of course,” says I, “they are texts. I know them a little. You and I could compete to see who knows them better.” For a moment, he’s off balance. Only a moment. “But you just select whatever text you happen to like and forget all the others,” says Goldilocks. “You know,” says I, “that sentence about not stealing seems to me unequivocal. Doesn’t require a lot of commentary.” Then I can’t resist adding: “And because you are stealing the land and the livelihood and the lives of these shepherds, who are people just like us, one day—maybe sooner than you think—you won’t be living here. Remember what I told you.” Goldilocks smiles.

Photo: Still from video by Nina Clark

We climb back up over the hills, weary now, though it’s only 7:45, and coming toward us are two army jeeps and one police car. Just an hour late. We tell them what happened. They take our identity cards. They’re not hostile this time, not the soldiers, not the policemen. Elchanan, however, the arch-settler, arrives, and they all shake hands, as usual. They’re friends, sort of. One of the soldiers says to us, “This wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t come here this morning.” Which must, in some crooked way, be true.

Elchanan, 2018. Photo: Margaret Olin

The shepherds in the tents welcome our return, and they are eager to hear the story. They are sad. Again and again they say, “Mit’asfin—we are sorry.” We tell them we’re OK, it’s all OK, and that if they stand firm over the coming days, things will get better, there will be some quiet. More tea and a rough breakfast of pita, olive oil, tomatoes. I can see our hosts are moved.

Guy recalls the moment—April 21, 2017—when fifteen settlers attacked the Ta’ayush activists at al-‘Auja Foq, Upper ‘Auja, and many were badly hurt, head wound, broken foot, deep hits. Soon after that, there was a demonstration against another new outpost in the northern Valley. At first the ‘Auja Palestinians were hesitating about coming to join us, but then they decided: “If you have lost blood for our sake, we cannot say no to you now.”

Photo: David Shulman, 2019

We drive to the Binyamin police station to file a complaint against Goldilocks. It takes time; it’s cold in the station; we wait. Our pictures aren’t good enough, but there is one eyewitness, me, whose testimony might count for something. The policewoman takes down Guy’s statement, then mine. Meanwhile, other guests arrive at the station to file a complaint (against Guy).

Also read: In Palestine, Memory is a Living, Haunting Thing

It’s Goldilocks and an obese, wildly unkempt, ugly giant of a settler, maybe some terrible ersatz father? We’ve seen him before. He seems to call the shots at “Angels of Peace.” The waiting room is rife with the intimacy of enmity and struggle. But Goldilocks is looking rather deflated, slouching, sullen, awkward, like a kid lost in the world. Maybe hitting and hurting and screaming and lying don’t really suit him. Maybe it’s not such a fun dance after all, especially when it’s over.

Until the next time.

Most photographs and video stills were taken during the activities described in this post. The unidentified photographs were taken in ‘Ein Rashshash in December, 2018, by Margaret Olin.

Margaret Olin teaches visual theory, photography theory and history, visual culture and Jewish visual studies at Yale University. David Shulman is an Indologist and an authority on the languages of India. A Professor Emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, he is an activist in Ta’ayush, Arab-Jewish Partnership.

This article was originally published on Touching Photographs. Read the original article here.