Settler girl who tried to stop evacuation of Amona: “Behind me stood the Lord Blessed Be He, and the people of Israel”
November 24, 2007 7:53 am National Religious (Religious Zionists), Settlers, Haunting Images
AMONA, West Bank/Feb. 2006
A Jewish settler struggles with an Israeli security officer as authorities evacuate a West Bank settlement near the Palestinian town of Ramallah after Israel’s Supreme Court cleared the way for the demolition of nine homes at the site. This photo won first prize in The World Press Photo awards. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)
Teibel, Subject of AP’s Pulitzer Prize-winning photo says God on her side, ap, 4/19/07
AMONA, West Bank (AP) — The photo caught the world’s attention: a lone 15-year-old girl holding back a wall of riot police moving in to demolish Jewish homes illegally erected in the West Bank.
Speaking for the first time since The Associated Press image won a Pulitzer prize this week, the girl, who would identify herself only as Nili, said God was on her side during the confrontation.
“In the photo you see me — one person as it were — against many. But that’s only an illusion,” said Nili, now two weeks shy of her 17th birthday, as she stood amid the ruins of the nine homes demolished in Amona in February 2006.
“Behind the many stood one man — (Prime Minister Ehud) Olmert,” who ordered the demolition. “Behind me stood the Lord Blessed Be He, and the people of Israel.”
Nili, a shy, gangly teen born in Israel to American parents, was one of several thousand Jewish protesters who barricaded themselves behind barbed wire and on rooftoops in an unsuccessful effort to keep club-wielding riot troops from demolishing the homes built on private Palestinian land.