I went to bed at 11p.m. Monday night with a belly full of cake and grilled chicken from the birthday celebration that my fellow Jewish-American activists and Palestinian partners had thrown for me. At the party, after everyone had gone around “roasting and toasting” me, I thanked them all and told them how much it meant to me to be held in this way when I’m so far from home, so far from my family, and so far from my fiancee (and our dog Mishmish).
Just a couple hours later, as “happy birthday” messages from friends in the States popped up on my phone, Israeli soldiers raided the village of Tuwani in the occupied West Bank, where I’m currently staying. They assaulted me as well as my Jewish and Palestinian friends. One soldier threatened to shoot me as I stood with my hands up.
As I sit here in Tuwani writing, I still feel really shaken up and scared. Going to sleep last night, I heard footsteps on the staircase and worried that soldiers were coming for us again. However, I feel some sense of relief knowing that you are listening to me and that you will take action for justice after reading this post.
At 12:30am on March 22nd, I was woken up by a frantic call from Sami Huraini, one of my Palestinian hosts here, who informed me that the Israeli military had entered the village. Two of my other friends and fellow human rights defenders, Maya Bickell, 23, and Katie Falk, 31, (both US citizens), woke up, threw on our boots and jackets, then we descended the stairs from the guesthouse. Some twenty Israeli soldiers, with assault rifles slung across their chests, marched up from the dark road into the Huraini’s driveway. I was shivering.
I said, “Shalom.”
The soldiers, all clad in forest green, crowded us and ordered that we stop filming and go back inside. I refused and advised them that I was an American Jew here to defend the Palestinian residents of the village. One short, clean-shaven soldier, who appeared to be the commander, approached me and said, “I understand, but now we are in a special activity. Please go home or I will have to confiscate this [my camera].”
A soldier pointed a gun at Hamoudi, 17, one of my Palestinian hosts.
“Why is he pointing that gun at him?” I asked. The commander reached for my arm. “Don’t touch me. I’m allowed to film you.”
Another soldier walked up to me with his face covered. “You’re from America? Well, now you’re in Israel.”
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“It’s not your business,” he said.
“The American embassy wants to know why you’re here.”
“So we are excited. Now go home.”
“No one is afraid of you here.”
“It’s mutual.”
The soldiers turned around in the road and descended towards the village entrance.
Professor Asher Kirschner, 61, (US/Canadian citizen), another activist friend, arrived in the driveway. He is sleeping at the house of another Tuwani partner, the Adraa family. Asher was wearing his fluorescent yellow jacket with silver reflective stripes.
“Is everyone ok?” he asked. “Did they arrest anyone?” We told them that they had not.
The soldiers gathered down the road beneath the streetlight in front of the town medical clinic, and then started back towards us in formation.
Asher yelled to them in heavily accented Hebrew, “Why are you here? There’s no problem here.”
The soldier ordered us out of the road, and I said “no” and told them that they were in Hamoudi’s home.
“Ah, ok. Great,” the soldier said back in Hebrew.
“Why are you guys here? What are you doing?” I asked. Silence.
I continued: “American Jews see what you’re doing and they oppose this occupation.”
The soldiers marched past us, past the Huraini’s house, and up the hill toward the illegal outpost settlement of Havat Maon.
“Why are you here?” I said again. “Are you here to intimidate the people? Is this fun for you? You see that you’re disturbing the village. You’re terrorizing people. What if someone came to your home and acted this way?”
The four of us then followed the occupation forces on foot, filming.
A soldier approached me and said, “please move” in English.
“Do you understand what I’m saying,” I asked.
“No, we don’t,” he said, still in English.
“Is this winning to you? Does this make you feel strong? You’re in the home of other people. I’m an American Jew. I have a similar history to you guys. This does not make us safer.”
A soldier with a neck gaiter pulled up over his nose replied, “The night is still very very young. You might [want to] save your battery.”
“What are you planning to do?” I asked.
“It’s not your business.”
“You invaded the place that I’m staying. It is my business. What is the purpose of this operation? Are you making an arrest? Did somebody commit a crime? Do you suspect someone here of having committed a crime? Please tell me. If you have an important reason for being here, I want to know what it is.” Silence. “None of you can tell me why you’re here. If you had an important reason to be here, you’d tell me what it is. Think about these children sleeping in their beds at night. Thinking about them waking up to see soldiers with guns, marching through their home.”
“Please be more quiet,” another soldier said to me. I laughed.
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“You’re too loud and watch your language. It’s not suitable for the kids here.”
“Move away,” the commander said.
“I will move away as soon as you tell me what you’re doing here.”
“Nothing that you can know,” he said.
We kept on walking beside the combatants.
“This is bad for our people. I’m an American Jew. What you’re doing here is bad for our people. Do you understand what I’m saying to you? This is bad for the Jews what you’re doing. People here are sleeping at night and you come with guns to their home. Imagine if it’s your children, your brother, your cousin—and soldiers come into their home at night. What would they think about Jewish people, about Israelis? They only see them coming with guns. What would they think? Is this the great purpose of the Israeli military to raid the village of defenseless people at night? … What would they think of you? Would they respect the mighty Israelis, the Jewish people, or would they fear them and grow to hate them?”
“They said that they’re going to try to tire us out,” Maya translated.
I laughed. “I can go all night, baby.”
I repeatedly asked the soldiers to identify themselves. I was met with silence.
“Imagine you’re in their [the Palestinians’] situation,” I said to the soldiers whose formation I had entered. “It’s not hard to do. Our people were once oppressed like the Palestinians. Our ancestors in the Middle East and Europe had soldiers come into their homes, had people force them from their homes. And then what did Jewish people do? They said, ‘No more!’ What do you expect them [the Palestinians] to do? They won’t take this… You’re oppressing these people, can’t you see?”
The commander came up to me. “Guys, guys, please go back. You can film [sic].”
“Don’t touch me!” I shouted.
“Don’t come inside our formation.”
“You have no formation! You’re disorganized!”
The soldier beside me started whistling.
The commander came over and corrected his troops’ formation, again. I chuckled.
“Do better. You guys are doing really poorly at your job occupying the village tonight. Is it time to go yet? [In Hebrew] is it time to go, or no? … Where is the war? Tell me, where is the war? I see soldiers, but I don’t see the war. Tell me. I want to understand. Where is the war?”
The commander came at me again. “You’re obstructing our military. Please give us the camera.”
The commander struggled with me for my iPhone.
“You cannot take my camera! Do not! Do not touch me!”
“Please, you’re obstructing. I don’t want to arrest you.”
“What are you doing?”
“I don’t have to tell you.”
“What’s your name? I don’t know who you are. What’s your name?”
“If you come back again, I will arrest you and take you. I don’t want to take you and I don’t want to take your camera.”
“You will not take my camera.”
One of the soldiers had snatched Hamoudi’s phone.
The commander ordered the soldiers to seize our cameras and they advanced on us.
“Is there a closed military zone order?” Asher asked. “I haven’t seen any order.”
“Don’t touch him,” I said.
“I’m not touching him. Relax,” the commander said.
“Why do you think I’m not relaxed? What would make me not relaxed right now? Is there an army nearby with guns?”
“Give back my phone,” Hamoudi called.
“We’re going to take all your cameras,” a tall soldier declared.
“Where is his phone?”
“Move away and we will give him back his phone.”
“How will you give it back if we move away?”
Then the Israeli soldiers attacked.
One soldier tried to grab my phone, but I broke away, then another struck me in my left forearm and my left thigh with his assault rifle. A third soldier tackled Asher to the ground and stole his camcorder. The commander grabbed Maya, bear hugging her from behind. She shrieked.
As quickly as the confrontation had escalated, it ended.
Immediately, the brigade returned all of the recording equipment that they had seized, went back down the road, and took position again near the medical clinic. We stood maybe 50 meters up the road, watching them and filming. For a minute, it looked like they were preparing to raid the clinic, with a few soldiers on one knee by the exterior walls, but then they didn’t.
What was this raid about? Was this a training operation?
Soon, Hamoudi’s father called us to return to the house and stand by the bonfire he had constructed. We went up and the soldiers departed within minutes, going back in the direction of Highway 317.
Meanwhile, on the other side of Tuwani, another activist with our group, Tommy, 21, was standing with our Palestinian partner Basel Adraa, 25, documenting another group of 20-some soldiers. When I arrived over there with Asher and Hamoudi, the soldiers were occupying the street by the Adraa's gas station with twelve or so Palestinian residents milling out, including Basel’s father, who was in zip-tie cuffs.
The Israelis barked orders at us in Hebrew, which I didn’t fully understand. Basel stood in his family’s courtyard, raised just a few feet above the road. He yelled down to the soldiers while filming with his iPhone. They shouted at him aggressively, pointing their guns, so I walked over to Basel to stand by his side.
Because I saw the soldiers training their weapons on him, I made my way over with my hands raised so as not to appear threatening. A soldier shined the light of his rifle at me and asked me to move to the side a bit. First he said, move to the left, then the right. I asked why, and he said, “Because if I can’t see you, I must think that you’re doing something that is illegal and I can shoot you.” I yelled back, "Are you threatening to shoot an American citizen?"
His commanding officer told him to be quiet.
The soldiers regrouped by the courtyard and we moved up the road. They advanced on us, the soldier in the front drawing a line in the air, declaring that we must all get on the other side of the line. As they prepared to throw a pair of stun grenades at us, I plugged my ears.
Bang, bang.
The troops then left in stages.
By 1:50am, all of the soldiers had departed, although a drone was spotted later on flying over the village. When Maya, Katie, Tommy, and I debriefed in the Adraa office, drinking tea and eating Nutella, Tommy informed me that the Israeli forces had searched a local activist’s house, turning over the apartment, but arresting no one and taking nothing.
(Watch the compilation video of the raid on Twitter.)
~
This was the third military night raid in Tuwani in the past three weeks and the second in four days. Last Thursday, soldiers raided the village and threatened Katie when I was away visiting Bethlehem. The following morning, a military jeep pulled up to the Hurainis’ house and shouted “good morning” to Sami when he stepped out on the balcony—a clear attempt at intimidation. (Sami has an ongoing court case against him for his nonviolent organizing.) The raid before that occurred on March 11. Of course, there have been many, many more.1
I have bruises on my forearm and thigh from where the soldiers hit me. I struggled to fall back asleep later that night, my veins coursing with adrenaline. When I woke up in the morning, I found that I had been sweating.
Since the raid, I’ve been thinking about something that the activist Tariq Hathaleen of Umm al Khair said to our group the night that we arrived in the South Hebron Hills:
The people who occupy another people are the people who went out of their humanity. If you come back to your humanity, you will not hurt others. This is true for all human beings. We are the people. We are people in this world, meant to love, to care, to interact with one another. There is no need for any kind of violence.2
Looking now at the photos of faces of the soldiers who assaulted us, I feel so angry. I’m pulled back to that moment and all I want is to hit back. Now, days later, I yearn for them to be punished.
I’m not a violent person, so I’m not going to hurt anyone. But I wish that someone with authority would, somehow.
At this moment, I understand how justice deferred encourages people to fight back violently against their oppressors. If no one will help the victim and the survivor, of course they might want to physically fight back themselves.
But then, somewhat begrudgingly, I remember our shared humanity, me and the soldiers. They have gone out of their humanity, but I will keep mine. For both our sakes.
What’s maybe worse than the state military violence and threats of state military violence is my sneaking suspicion that no one really cares, or that others won’t do anything to help me, which are the same thing.
After the assault, I immediately called the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv. It was 3 a.m. and the emergency number put me through to the U.S. marine stationed at Post #1. I explained to him in detail what happened, drawing on the notes that Maya, Tommy, Katie, and I had composed during our debrief. The marine put me on hold as he tried to reach someone else. He returned to the call and told me that no one was available to speak to me and that I should call back after 8 a.m.
At 10 a.m., I called the U.S. Embassy, and the person who answered directed me to call the consulate in Jerusalem. I called the consulate in Jerusalem at the number listed on their website, but I got an automatic message, with the robotic voice of death, that said that this number had a voicemail box that had not been set up yet. I called the embassy again and demanded to speak to someone.
A woman named Shari answered. She told me that I needed to email the consulate with a summary of the events and provided the email address. After a laundry list of details that I should be sure to include, she said, “While I have you on the phone, do you, um, want to tell me what happened?” Tears welled up in my eyes. I took a deep breath and shared the story of the previous night. I finished by saying, “It feels really good to know that someone is listening.”
In my email later, I wrote:
I would very much appreciate whatever your office can do to provide some accountability here. In particular, I would like the soldiers who assaulted us and threatened to shoot me to receive some consequences. I would also ask that your office demand that the Israeli army ensure our safety by ceasing all raids in the village. Of course, everyone deserves to live with safety and security, but your office may have special authority when it comes to the safety and security of US citizens like myself and my fellow activists.
Shari replied two days later, saying:
…it is recommended that you relocate to a different village… The Embassy does not have any jurisdiction to investigate or prosecute criminal acts committed abroad against U.S. citizens. Such an investigation and prosecution are solely the responsibility of local authorities – be it the Palestinian police or Israeli Police.
I wrote back: “Since I was physically assaulted by Israeli forces, I do not trust that other Israeli authorities (e.g., police) will provide safety or accountability here.”
Luckily, people in my congressman’s office have been very responsive. I emailed them from the street during the raid, and they responded within hours, asking if I was ok.
A new contact of the Center for Jewish Nonviolence at the U.S. Embassy has also been kind in the aftermath. She asked that I forward her my description of the events. In the evening, she wrote: “Keep me updated on what happens tonight and please stay safe. Sounds like an [sic] terrifying evening for you all and the community.”
And my friends and family in the United States have also been sending their warm wishes. At least a dozen friends and family members reached out over WhatsApp and Messenger to check on me. Of course, my fiancee Clarissa sat with me on videochat for an hour the day after and listened as I told the story, laughed at myself and intermittently wept.
I initially wanted to write a piece about the assault for the Forward. I had co-published an article with the Palestinian human rights defender Issa Amro in the leading Jewish American journal last summer about the importance of Jews joining Palestinian in co-resistance to the occupation. However, the editor passed on my pitch.3
I forwarded my appeal to the U.S. diplomatic mission (which was complete with video evidence) to several journalists in the U.S. and Israel, but only one of them responded. She didn’t write an article, but she did repost the videos on Twitter and tagged me.
I’m not going to bother to pitch my hometown Jewish publication, the Detroit Jewish News, because, since they fired their editor-in-chief Andrew Lapin last year (presumably because of his Israel/Palestine politics), they won’t publish anything critical of Israel’s brutal military occupation. I doubt that the fact that Israeli soldiers assaulted Jewish Americans, and not just the Palestinian brutes, would sway the editors at all. But maybe they’ll prove me wrong and republish this blog post when I send it to them.
I guess that I shouldn’t be surprised by the lack of journalistic interest. Unfortunately, this sort of raid is very common in the South Hebron Hills in general and Tuwani in particular. However, it is uncommon for a group of anti-occupation Jewish American activists, like myself, to confront the army on the streets during the military operation, questioning and documenting them, and getting threatened and physically attacked by said soldiers. Obviously, the establishment media is racist against Palestinians. You don’t need a Harvard degree to know that. But I thought that by putting my privileged Jewish American body on the line, I could expose this military occupation and this apartheid state. But is the traditional media in the U.S. and Israel too accustomed to this brutality to blink an eye, like the soldiers who were confused by how upset I was? Is my embodied argument that the occupation hurts Jews as well as Palestinian already passe?
~
You have an opportunity now to defend the people of the South Hebron Hills from further racist state violence.
In the coming weeks or months, the Israeli military will likely attempt to forcibly remove 1,300 Palestinian residents of the South Hebron Hills (specifically, a region called Masafer Yatta). Our Palestinian partners and allied Jewish campaigners now believe that the only way to stop this ethnic cleansing is for the United States to intervene diplomatically. I’m inviting you to join the campaign to #SaveMasaferYatta. After you sign up, you will receive instructions about how to contact your U.S. representatives in the coming days.4
I am bruised and weary and more convinced than ever that Jewish supremacy in this land will end. However, following the lead of Palestinians and anti-apartheid Israelis, it must be us that end it.