One of the settlers took a knife and stabbed the donkey over and over until he killed him
August 7, 2008 6:53 am SettlersAvi Issacharoff, The land of unchecked settler harassment, Haaretz, August 7, 2008
The carcass of a butchered donkey is still lying in the olive grove of the Sufan family. Every single week since mid-June, the family, whose home is on the southern edge of the village of Burin, near Nablus, has suffered harassment by settlers living in outposts near the settlement of Yitzhar.
The mother, Hinan (Umm Ayman), says she has filed an endless number of complaints with the police, “but everything is kalam fadi (empty talk). They do nothing, and they do not even compensate us.”
On June 16, Musa’ab, the son, took the sheep herd out with his neighbor Munir and his brother Bashir in the hills surrounding the family home. “At some point,” Munir recalls, “we saw a car heading our way from the direction of Yitzhar. Two settlers stepped out of the car, and the vehicle continued on its way, went around a bend and disappeared. But then we saw that eight more settlers were walking toward us, and some had knives in their hands. They set sheafs of wheat on fire and moved closer to the home of Umm Ayman and threw stones at the house. We ran away with our sheep but left the Sufan family’s donkey behind. One of the settlers took a knife and stabbed the donkey over and over until he killed him. We filed a complaint with the police, who came and took photographs of the site.”
Umm Ayman’s home is now surrounded by burned-out hills, the result of repeated arson by settlers. The family home looks like a semi-fortified outpost. The windows in the upper floor are covered with metal nets, to keep stones out, and the windows in the lower level are protected by heavy metal shutters.