I visited a shepherd outpost run by Moriah and Moshe Sharvit. Arabs were not “regular people,” Moriah told me. She said her husband was stopping Palestinians from “stealing” land that was given to the Jews by God. She said their illegal farm was supported by various govt branches
As Avi Naim of the Ministry of Settlement Affairs put it, settlers were helping “prevent Palestinian invasions” of West Bank land. “You take people who believe in that goal as a pioneering mission, and let them spearhead the work to keep control of land,” he said.
Moriah Sharvit told me the army gave her and her husband M16s. Since 2020, the Sharvits had surveillance cameras on the land surrounding the outpost that were controlled by soldiers at a command center. Then after Oct 7, Moriah said, Palestinians living nearby “just left.”
The night after our interview at the outpost, a fire was lit in one of the nearby Palestinians’ empty houses.
The Palestinians from those houses told me after October 7, Moshe Sharvit and his brother showed up with M16s, beat an old man, and told them to leave.
A number of Palestinian communities were depopulated before and after October 7. This is Wadi Al-Seeq, which was evacuated by settlers and soldiers on October 12.
When I visited the empty community, I ran into Neria Ben-Pazi, the man who organized the expulsion of the Palestinians. He lives there now. A settler publication said his illegal outpost had previously been visited by senior IDF officers and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
I was surprised how openly settlers likened the current time to 1948, the year 700,000 Palestinians were exiled. David Elhayani, governor of a settler regional council, told me, “The fight of 1948 is the same fight [today] in all of Judea and Samaria”—the fight over land.”
In one village, settlers left fliers on farmers’ cars. It read, “You wanted war, now wait for the great Nakba. . . . This is your last chance to escape to Jordan in an orderly fashion before we forcibly expel you from our holy lands, which were given to us by God.”
It’s not just fringe extremists glorifying the nakba. Bezalel Smotrich, who oversees the West Bank, wrote, “Zionism was built based on population exchange” including “the exit of masses of Arabs” from Israel. “This historic pattern seems to require culmination.” This is his goal.
I wrote about the violence of settlers, and the ways the state of Israel supports them in grabbing land, for The New Yorker. newyorker.com/magazine/2024/…
History does not stop at a convenient point. Suddenly present! It is a continuum, a product evolving, an endless play on minds & hearts through creation & destruction, survival and loss. You present us a story in which you want the reader to believe history can start & stop, replay & fast forward right past reality. This story focus is on the remnants of previous empire, the people at the outskirts tattered, torn, impoverished by the realities of change further complicated by their adherence to the most inflexible aspects of their belief system. One that sets them at a disadvantage distinct from their fellow believers in neighboring affluence. But it is out of time & place. The reader must accept the simplistic notion that these few are of the land while those others are definitely -and defined as -not of this place. Your preference is clear and presented as people of the land who are being either obliterated in stages or pushed towards the lands of their relations and off of the contended land by hyper-zealot modern-day expansionists, as a militant government turns a blind eye & a secretive helping hand long enough for entrenchment-always providing a distraction at a distance. Little thought or patience is given for other perspectives on how the various parties to this multifaceted animosity got to this place in their minds or on the maps they wield in defense of their claims. Any openness from Israelis interviewed is either a momentary lapse in the accepted line “recovered’ before too much is said to damn them or else an aggressive embrace of a divine and/or military right. Absolutely no mention is made of the divine authority assumed by your favored group. Nor is any remedy other than a bland broth of UN-inspired massive managerial handling neutering human intention, ethnicity, faith, or history -ancient or modern. Staking claim to historic lands & defending them with a foresight indicative of a deeply seeded conviction is: BAD-if you possess initiative, means & support sufficient to establish yourselves. GOOD-if you have got nothing and have done even less. A fair smattering of rhetoric from revolutionary-type voices is interposed with the melancholic narratives in defense of peaceful olive-picking descendants of nomadics whose only wish is to be left alone in their pastoral lives. The more demand -the more likely to be Israeli (especially Israeli by way of blond New Jersey). The more put upon and put down the more deserving of un -Stated demands. You side with a varied people whose ancestors tore through the world on a violent high and have since dissipated into the past leaving behind these as vestiges. This,you will defend in your way. But the people who survived waves of conquests and dispersions to reunite and build on those ruins are condescendingly denied the authenticity of their claim to the land and their enduring desire to build their own kingdom of strength & beauty. Decisions are being influenced by narratives accepting this prejudiced perspective. Generations will be affected. Are we to understand that the juxtaposition of well-run sheep ranches serving double duty as 1st line of defense borderland, partnered with little red-roofed houses, tennis courts, bistros and tree-lined drives are the mark of the beast whereas (barely) subsistence farming and shepherding is the authentic and just future for the region? What long-term benefits are to be had by appointing blame by body count or financial incentive? There is a piece of land lived in & loved by persons and groups who will not live in peace or love for one another. Marching in with orders from Oslo is old hat. The upper hand is not always and only the oppressive one. It may very well be the one with the strength and ability to lead.
@shane_bauer ZioNazism: When as a nation, as a society, as a people you have ultimately become absolutely everything you supposedly hate.
@shane_bauer What an excellent piece of journalism…Your capturing of settlers, their ideology and Gov support was very informative, including the injustices being perpetrated on multi generational Palestinian families subjected to state sanctioned settler violence and appropriation. 🙏🙏🙏
@shane_bauer This was excellent and so powerful.
@shane_bauer Israel and the IOF clearly demonstrating how they are complying with @CIJ_ICJ ... (not). x.com/mariaminpeace/…
@shane_bauer Israel and the IOF clearly demonstrating how they are complying with @CIJ_ICJ ... (not). x.com/mariaminpeace/…
@shane_bauer Hi Shane. I live in New Zealand. Yesterday the extremist settlers were banned from flying on our national carrier by our Government. And HAMAS is now a terrorist organization.
@shane_bauer I eagerly await your follow up article on the Palestinian terrorists relentlessly attacking the Jews of Judea and Samaria.