Protective presence, plowing, family visits

 The car filled up with packs of clothes, diapers etc., and another participant who came from Brooklyn after reading an article of Tzav Piyus. He came to see for himself how harsh the situation was on the ground. He is an elderly Jew from Brooklyn, a bit in the style of Woody Allen, unhappy with the level of protective presence and thinking how to promote this with American money. Time will tell… At the end of the day, he lets us know that after such a degree of suffering he witnessed today, he needs no more.

It’s a pleasant, sunny day after days of rain. Some of the communities carry out plowing and sowing. The Palestinian Authority may have donated a few sacks of seed. The group of accompaniers is getting organized to accompany the plowing and prevent colonist attacks.

After coffee at Hamra, we opened our morning in Samara. In fact, our car gives us away. We help our hostess feed the sheep while the men sow and plow simultaneously.

At 10 a.m. a call came from Hadadiya, a colonist has arrived and causes an event, they need help. We reached them when the event was already in full swing. The group of Palestinian men, who as we know are prevented from grazing their flocks out in the area for some weeks since the new colonist outpost is being built on their land, are sitting together at the residential area. Facing them is a group of male and female soldiers, keeping things completely silent. Apparently, the nameless colonist arrives here every morning on his ATV, drives into the flock lying around the encampment and chases it away. That morning, he almost ran over one of the women, and then accused her of throwing stones.

With us came more soldiers. Together I counted 10 male and female soldiers. Undoubtedly the women soldiers are best at the threats and intimidations they sound.

Rules of the game: you Palestinians sit quiet, don’t make a sound. If you do, you will get yells and swear words from the army, armed from head to toe in its righteousness. “Our” land. “Our” country. “our” rights. What are you even doing here?

Why are they sitting, arrested, on their own land? Asks the naïve one.

Their own land?

Why are you here? Why don’t you let them live? By what right have people erected an outpost here and decide where they can and cannot be?

The answers all resound in Ben Gvir’s power-mongering arrogant lingo.

The questions are soon turned into statements about the future in which we shall witness delegations of the state and the armed army marching to the Hague, headed by the Prime Minister and his lackeys.

After we refused to identify ourselves to the soldiers, the police were summoned and we became the conversation piece, for there was no real event. They were just playing for time. They had to rule the colonist’s complaint about the “stone thrower” and since “they had proof” – although no one saw her doing that except that colonist’s imagination – she and another two guys were shackled and blindfolded and waited for the police to pick them up.

Two cars filled with policemen and security officials and all those clowns had to hear me      yell that the Hague was waiting for them. I also explained to anyone who wished to hear that the noise I am making replaces what the Palestinians cannot yell. After the army took the detainees away, it dispersed and life resumed its non-existent course.

We spoke with the women present at the event who claimed that not a single stone was thrown. They repeated the description as has already been written here. They were concerned about the people detained for no reason. The colonist went back to his new and growing home. What we saw on our last visit as the bit of a roof now looks like a completed structure, a yard of a new cowshed and more coming.

It’s hard to handle reality facing a group of liars, made up of all the arms of power. One can only either yell out or keep silent. Clearly for now the battle is lost.

The detainees were released after some hours and returned home.

We came back to the end of the plowing at Samara. Then we brought diapers for a needy girl at Hamam Al Malih. We picked up the American from Farisiya, and drove home.