June 6, 2015 You may be getting tired of hearing about our micro-victories, especially since what is happening in Israel in general, and on the West Bank in particular, is so appalling. We live in Bibiland, ruled by Bibispeak and a government mainly composed of grotesque figures, totalitarian by inclination, racist by persuasion, self-righteous and malicious by creed and need; never, not even in recent years, has Israel seen a government such as this. The race to self-destruction is accelerating, with none to stop it from inside. How strange, then […]Monday, June 1 2015 Hebron, Abu Anan by David Shulman May 30, 2015 Happily, nothing very dramatic happened today in South Hebron, unless you consider acts of friendship, perseverance, and somehow doing the decent thing as in their own way dramatic. I spent the whole day harvesting the fields of Abu Anan. He’s an old friend, a lovable man of almost mythic qualities. Born in Hebron long ago. Driven from his first home, then his second home, by Israeli settlers, who also stole considerable chunks of his land. Still he didn’t give up. He built a third, and then a […]
Tuesday, May 19 2015 Umm al-Ara’is, Mufagara, Harruba by David Shulman
There are some pleasant surprises in store for us today. We have already set off on foot by the main path to Umm al-Ara’is, a good half-hour’s walk through the desert; shepherds wave hello from the slopes above us. It is 8:30 and still not too hot. I’m happy to be walking through this landscape once again—I was away for a month because of minor surgery—but within a few minutes Sa’id arrives in his clunky, white, infinitely expandable van: we count seventeen children and not a few adults. They tell […]Saturday, November 15 2014 Palestinians and Activists Attacked near The Settlement of Asfar Another incident of settlers violence against Palestinians in their privately owned land, near the settlement of Asfar (Meizad).
Saturday, August 30 2014 Wadi Simsim, Tequ’a by David Shulman
There is innocence, and there is the smug delusion of innocence. It’s not hard to tell them apart. I saw a lot of both today. Suhail was born in the tents of Wadi Simsim and has lived his whole life here, in the wadi, with the goats and the sheep. This is his world. He knows every rock. He never studied. He speaks only Arabic (the lush, musical dialect of the south). Yet he is a man of the world, and he knows right from wrong. He’s holding in a […]Saturday, August 16 2014 The Good News by David Shulman
1. Umm al-’Amad. Many of you will remember the long struggle to reclaim this fertile valley, the Maraga Lands, for their rightful Palestinian owners, after 12 years or more in which they had no access to them. The wadi at Umm al-’Amad is situated just beneath the large, cruel settlement of Othniel, whose settlers are sitting on the lands of Umm al-’Amad and neighboring villages; these settlers have done whatever they could to drive the owners away, often attacking them physically and subjecting them to the usual regime of […]Saturday, August 2 2014 Tequ’a and Umm al-Ara’is by David Shulman
Dizzy from the dissonance. In the felafel shop off the main street in Tequ’a, the TV is perched high on the wall in the corner. News from Gaza in Arabic. A mother lies on a hospital cot, her face pocked with a hundred tiny, and some not-so-tiny, red wounds, probably from shrapnel. She cannot speak, keeps fading off into sleep (let us hope it’s not death). Beside her, a two-year-old child is crying, hopeless, holding her hand, looking at her face. The young owner of the shop scoops balls […]Saturday, July 12 2014 Umm al-Ara’is, Susya, Bi’r al-‘Id, Ma’asara by David Shulman Business as usual in the South Hebron hills. There’s a war on in Gaza, but that too is business as usual, the meaningless biannual ritual in which both sides gleefully smash one another before reverting to the status quo ante. The Israeli media are drowning us in words, a vast and raucous flood, and the government is putting out its familiar, mendacious statements; perhaps in recent days only Abu Mazen has spoken the truth. The only solution, he said, is a political one, and Netanyahu is no partner. Meanwhile, […]
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