There is no Sabbath celebration such as that of setting a Palestinian village on fire with its inhabitants…

It reminds me of the Ukrainian Hmelnitzky stories my grandmother used to tell me, about how Jews would hide in their

homes, seal their windows with planks and tremble with fear of the pogroms the brutes would hold on their

own holiday. Now the colonists resemble those very brutes. Come a Sabbath or holiday, they put on a white

holiday shirt and run off to the nearest Palestinian village, tassels and side-curls waving, and brutalize them.

Yesterday it was the peaceful village Jalud. The brutes came from the colonist outpost Ahiya (or another nearby).

They came down on the Sabbath and burnt cars and people, murdered innocent sheep and poisoned one of the wells

of the village. “Observe the Sabbath” is a holy tradition (taking care not to light their homes, of course).

The next day, we came on a volunteer-loaded bus to Jalud village to help with the olive harvest. There were Israelis,

Americans, French and even two people from China. They all said one thing as they stood with the Palestinians around

the olive trees: We are with you. More than the actual harvest, we came to express our revulsion of the pogrom, and our solidarity

with you, our Palestinian brethren. We came in the name of humanity, of the love of our fellow man, to put an end to the

cruelty of this criminal messianism.

In the shadow of the cruel event, as the olives dropped onto the nylon sheets, a great fraternity was born among people who had

been complete strangers just a few hours back. They smiled at each other, spoke with each other, hands met, friendship and hope for

a better future lit up the faces of the olive harvesters and the hosts, and when it was time to get back to Israel, it was very difficult to part.

The children of the village stood along the village sidewalks and wished to shake our hands, waving us goodbye with a broad smile as we left.