Month: June 2024

diary · israel

The settler wants to live, and he wants the Palestinian not to live

levtaylor

When King David was a boy, he worked as a shepherd in the valleys. His job was to keep the wolves away from the flocks.

Today, in the valleys of this ancient land, there are no wolves.

But there are settlers.

We are waiting in the shadow of a large Israeli settlement, comprised of roughly 1,000 people. Palestinian shepherds graze their flocks, hoping the settler youth won’t turn up and attack the locals. If they do, our only role is as a “protective presence.” The hope is that Israeli and international observers will deter them from being excessively violent. It is unlikely that the police or army will intervene and, if they do, it will be on the side of the settlers.

I am amazed by the resilience of the shepherds. The Palestinians call it by the Arabic word sumud: going to ground and not giving up.

Yet what other choice do they have? This is not just their ancestral land and their generational way of life. They have nowhere else to go. Why should they join others as refugees or in displaced person camps?

The shepherds describe how their space has got ever smaller. “Our lives are very hard. The settler wants to live, and he wants the Palestinian not to live.” This, they say, has ramped up significantly since the start of the war.

Their homes have already been destroyed. The settlers have cut off their water, made it harder for them to access their land, and paved motorways with military checkpoints through the grazing pastures.

It is so unjust, and I cannot see how anything will change.

For now, I hope, we may be able to keep the wolves at bay.

diary · israel

Bring them home now

levtaylor

In the morning, at Shabbat services, a young woman got up at the end to announce that last week was the birthday of a girl she had taught as a youth leader. Her friends all met up in Tel Aviv to celebrate it. She wasn’t there.

Her name is Naama Levy. She was taken hostage on October 7th. The images of her capture are burned into my brain. If you have not seen them, please exercise extreme caution before you look them up.

After Shabbat services, I went down to see friends in Rechavya. There, all the posters are displayed for a guy called Hersh Goldberg-Polin. He is an ultra for the local football team, HaPoel Yerushalayim.

Hersh was abducted on October 7th after his arm was blown off by a grenade. His mother has been campaigning tirelessly for diplomatic measures to get her son home safe.

At my friend’s house, she asks: “my mum says that back home in America “bring them home” is a pro-war slogan? Can that be true?”

“Yes, it is in Britain too. It’s been quite the adjustment seeing it here.”

“But who is it directed at?”

“I don’t know, I guess they’re petitioning Hamas.”

“I don’t understand though: how can people want the hostages home and be pro-war?”

“The hostages are the pretext for all the attacks on Gaza.”

“But they are not in Gaza for the hostages!” her husband insists.

I know. They know. Everyone here knows. I wish people in Britain knew too.

When Shabbat ended and the first stars appeared in the sky, I joined the protests to bring the hostages home.

Everyone had banners calling for an end to war and an end to occupation. Supporters of Hersh’s mum handed out stickers with the number of days he has been held captive.

At the end, legendary Israeli peacenik David Grossman gave a speech as police charged at demonstrators.

Where is their support from Diaspora Jews? I wish I could hear my own community’s voices raised like these in Jerusalem- against war.

diary · israel

They are destroying the world on top of our heads

levtaylor

We are looking at a video of a little girl, learning to dance, waving to her daddy.

He has not seen her since October.

Gone is the joy of our hearts; our dancing has turned into mourning.

Yesterday, I spent the day with paperless workers from Gaza in the West Bank. After October 7th, all of the workers from Gaza who had passed the security checks had their work permits revoked. If they stayed at their postings in Israel, they would be taken to detention centres, where they would be beaten. If they returned to Gaza, they may well die. They fled to the West Bank, where they are now in hiding.

One of them is showing me a video of his daughter learning a traditional Palestinian dance. “The war has destroyed everything beautiful,” he says.

These men tell me their stories, and I hear them intermingled with every other story of disaster I have ever heard. I was not prepared for the scale of despair I would feel. I hear their words, and I hear the prophet Jeremiah echoing back lamentations.

I am the strong man who has seen oppression under the totem of his overflowing rage.

They are still not safe in the West Bank, either. A few days ago, the Israeli army marched up and down their stairs at night. If they had found them, they would have deported them to Gaza or imprisoned them. They weren’t actually looking for anyone, though. The army calls it “making our presence known.” Breaking the Silence reports it as a common intimidation tactic.

“We haven’t left the house in three days. It just feels too scary to go outside.”

He has walled me in and I cannot escape; he is weighed me down with chains.

They are catching up on the situation, sharing news from Gaza City, Khan Younis, Nuseirat, Rafah. We watch a video of an old lady woken up in the night by soldiers, who set their dog on her.

Streams of water fall from my eyes over the destruction of my people.

We hear stories of families back home. They cannot eat properly. People have only eaten tinned food. There are no fresh vegetables. The water is dirty. People are smoking leaves from trees. Everything is so expensive. People will fight each other for scraps.

Children beg for bread, but not a scrap for them.

Now they are getting sick. Skin diseases. Insects that eat up arms. Sores and spots appearing on the face. Why are my child’s lips fuzzy red? Why can’t my mother get up out of bed? They are all so sick in mind and body.

Our skin glows like an oven with the fever of famine.

They have been chased around by bombs to every corner of the beseiged area of Gaza. Now, one man’s entire family are staying in a sweaty fabric tent on a cousin’s land. Everything is destroyed. Where there are buildings, they cram twenty people into tiny rooms. It is already so very hot here.

Swifter were our pursuers than the eagles of the sky. In the mountains they pursued us and in the wilderness they ambushed us.

Back in London, there were all kinds of debates about ideology and tactics and strategies. Now, in front of me, there are real human beings, who just want to go home and see their children. “They are destroying the world on top of our heads.”

My life is bereft of peace. I have forgotten what happiness is.

I ask about their childhoods in Gaza. “We had a lot of adventures. We had days at the beach. We endured wars and all kinds of problems but never anything like this. Our celebrations were so huge. A wedding lasts a week and thousands of people come from all round. I married my best friend’s sister and he married mine and we were all going to grow up together…”

He has ravaged the booth like a garden; he has slaughtered his sanctuary.

“I don’t want a big house any more. I just want the war to be over. I just want to see my daughters again.”

diary · israel

The jackals braying in the mountains

levtaylor

I woke up this morning in a friend’s home on a moshav in Israel-Palestine. I am here for a month to learn and to volunteer with Rabbis for Human Rights.

The setting is beautiful. As the sun set last night over the mountains, the shrublands lit up in shades of orange and brown. Then jackals began to bray, calling out in the echoing valley. As we went to sleep, we even heard a hyena.

Overlooking us is a massive military compound for Israeli surveillance. On the walk to my friend’s home, I could see the separation wall.

We are on land that was taken during the Nakba of 1948. The people who lived here were dispersed, and their farmland taken. We can now see the native fig vines still, but alongside European pine trees planted by the JNF. The village opposite us is comprised of people who were forcefully evicted from a neighbouring town. They are Palestinian citizens of Israel within the “Green Line.”

It is all here. The beauty and the architecture of war. The reality of cruelty and the possibility of what might be.

“If anything, I am more convinced I want to stay now,” my friend says.

Since the start of the war, they have been protesting for peace several times a week. They have been involved in grassroots solidarity actions and getting aid to the people who need it most. At the very beginning, they were part of underground efforts to get people to safety. (And now you understand why I have to write so vaguely.)

The work looks exhausting. They and their friends have been beaten, imprisoned, shot at, and surveyed, only for trying to bring about peace.

“I have to stay now because I can see what it could be.”

Amidst all the rubble, they can see even more clearly the possibilities of a shared peaceful future with the Palestinians. And feel even more that is worth fighting for.

Once our rabbis were ascending to Jerusalem.  When they reached Mount Scopus, they tore their garments.  When they reached the Temple Mount, they saw a jackal leaving from the site of the inner sanctum of the Temple ruins. They began weeping, but Rabbi Akiva laughed.

The sages said to him, “Why do you laugh?”  He said to them, “Why do you weep?”

They said to him, “Jackals now tread on the site regarding which it is written, ‘And the stranger who approaches shall die’ (Bamdibar 1:51) – shall we not weep?”

He said to them, “For this very reason I laugh… In the context of the prophecy of Uriya it is written, ‘Therefore, because of you, Zion shall be plowed like a field’ (Yirmiyahu 26:18), and in the prophecy of Zekharya it is written, ‘Elderly men and women shall once again sit along the streets of Jerusalem’ (Zekharya 8:5). 

Until Uriya’s prophecy was realized, I feared that perhaps Zekharya’s prophecy would not be realized; but now that Uriya’s prophecy has been realized, it is certain that Zekharya’s prophecy will be realized.”

There are jackals braying in the mountains here. There is occupation and division and war.

And there are also the people building solidarity. Because of them, the prophecies of peace may be fulfilled.