Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

According to his blog, themagneszionist.blogspot.com, “Jeremiah (Jerry) Haber is the nom de plume of an orthodox Jewish studies professor who divides his time between Israel and the US.” Today “Jerry” posted the following graphic description of settler violence by David Shulman. Speaking of this account, Haber writes: “My brain screams when I read things like this….” Mine does too.

The “Gerald” Shulman refers is Gerald Cromer, the author of A War of Words: Political Violence and Public Debate in Israel. Cromer recently died of cancer.

The Magnes Zionist: David Shulman’s New Testimony, April 27, 2008

Um Zeituna, April 5, 2008

Things are heating up in the hills south of Hebron. We’re not sure why. One guess is that someone in the Civil Administration, that is, the Israeli occupation authority, has taken a deliberate decision. Or it may simply be the further, continuous entrenchment of the occupation itself, with its natural effects—the remorseless appropriation of more and more land, the consequent harassment of Palestinian civilians living on or near these lands, the expansion of the settlers-only road system, the soporific, shameful legal system that mostly serves the soldiers and the settlers. In any case, there is no doubt about what is happening on the ground. Two weeks ago Palestinian children were viciously attacked by settlers, and several wounded, as they were walking to school. The army escort that was supposed to protect them stood by passively. Over the last weeks, each time our volunteers have come down to escort shepherds to their grazing lands, they have been assaulted. Amiel and a small group near the settlement of Maon were surrounded, beaten, and nearly lynched. Meanwhile, one of the settler Rabbis has published a legal opinion setting out a calculus of human value in the occupied territories: one Jew, says the Rabbi, is worth a thousand Palestinian lives.

It’s clear we’re needed. The rains failed this year, the earth is dry, and the grazing grounds are much reduced. The cave-dwellers depend on their herds of sheep and goats for subsistence. For now, at least, there are still a few green wadis suitable for grazing, and the shepherds have to make the most of them. In theory, a rough modus vivendi was worked out with the soldiers: Palestinians can graze their flocks in the flat bed of the wadis between the settlements, but they are forbidden to let the sheep graze anywhere on the hills. Never mind that these hills have belonged since Biblical times to these same shepherds. In practice, moreover, the settlers drive the shepherds away even from the wadi bed, too, usually beating them for good measure.

We walk down the rocky slope, thick with thorns, to join Ahmad, who is grazing his herd just below the cow-barn of Maon. Ahmad is from Tuba, with its tents and caves, a kilometer or so away over the hills. Lambs bleat in the fierce sun. It is early morning. Within minutes, a discovery: small piles of parched maize are scattered over the bed of the wadi; beside them lie a few dead birds and rodents. Ahmad says he thinks they’re coated with poison—a repeat of the episode three years ago when settlers from Chavat Maon spread poison through the fields in Twaneh, just down the road. Later we hear that children from Tuba saw several young people from Maon spreading the suspicious maize last evening, the whole length of the wadi. Carefully, we collect samples, which we will have tested in Jerusalem. We mark the many sites with piles of stone, and we send word to the other shepherds to keep their sheep away from this wadi, the main access route to the village.