I arrive in Tel Aviv on Thursday night for my weekend off as Israeli forces are still searching for the gunman who shot up a crowded street in the central city, killing two and injuring ten more. My first thought is, “That could have been me.” I can easily imagine myself as the victim, enjoying a beer at a bar—like I had planned to do this night—minding my own business, when someone opens fire indiscriminately on me and the other Jews around me. One of the Israelis killed was 28 years old, my age. The other was 27.
But my second thought is, “I understand why this happened.” For two months, I’ve been living in the occupied West Bank, witnessing the daily indignities that Israel inflicts on the Palestinian people. I have seen settlers invade defenseless, isolated Palestinian villages in broad daylight, stealing from their land and smashing their car windows, while Israeli authorities stand idly by. I have experienced a military night raid, felt the cold steel of a soldier’s assault rifle strike my body, and clenched rage in my fists and bit back vitriol. I have waited with Palestinian partners for their friends to be released from days-long detention after arbitrary arrest and a $1000-bail bond. And these are not the worst traumas that Palestinians face.
To acknowledge that the brutal Israeli military occupation drives people crazy with its constant harassment and violence does not curtail our compassion for the Jewish-Israeli victims. To the contrary. By seeking to understand how people could go out of their humanity and choose to kill (and accept that they will likely be killed in response), we are expanding our capacity for empathy. What makes someone so desperate, so angry, so miserable in life that they are ready to die? Feeling the other’s pain is important, not just as an exercise in personal growth, or as a reaction to one event, but as a matter of attuning ourselves to the entire system of oppression and privilege imbedded in Israel/Palestine which spills blood so cheaply—from Tel Aviv to Gaza.
For each of the four lone wolf killers who targeted Israelis in the past two weeks, there are thousands of Palestinians who experience the same oppression but do not choose violence. Many of them instead opt for nonviolent resistance. I’m in partnership with a few of them, and I would like to share their perspectives with you, via their published works.
In print:
“To exact ‘revenge,’ Israeli settlers wreaked havoc in my village: Settlers attacked Tuba the day after the Bnei Brak shooting, with soldiers doing nothing to stop them. This is the constant state of terror we live under,” (Ali Awad, 4/4/22, +972 Magazine)
“Why can’t my sister sleep at night? Because soldiers keep raiding our home: Israeli soldiers have been harassing, assaulting, and arresting my family and neighbors in almost weekly night raids. For them, it's all just a training exercise,” (Basil al-Adraa, 3/27/22, +972 Magazine)
“What Israel also destroys when it demolishes a child’s home: Children in the South Hebron Hills face a recurring trauma: the state's destruction of their homes, and of the security a home is supposed to bring,” (Hamdan Mohammed Al-Huraini, 3/15/22, +972 Magazine)
Multimedia:
“The settlers beat the shepherds, the soldiers destroy our tents, close our roads, and scare our children”: an illustrated narrative essay (Hamdan Mohammed Al-Huraini, 8/9/19)
“The Campaign to Save Masafer Yatta” (interview with Ali Awad, 4/7/22, Unsettled Podcast)
Shabbat shalom and Ramadan Kareem.