“I’m a soldier in the army of peace.” Thus Yehonatan, as night falls in the madafeh of Ras al-‘Ain. The mystery has been solved: he is the ultra-religious Haredi young man who has become a familiar activist in the Jordan Valley and elsewhere. In fact, he seems to be almost everywhere. He was wounded by a settler at an olive harvest at Battir, near Jerusalem, not long ago (the settler threw a stun grenade at him). He makes light of his wound. Muhammad told us about him, with admiration and wonder, last time I was in Ras al-‘Ain. He is my partner today for the night-and-early-morning shift.

He is, in my eyes, a true Jew—ironically, something of a rarity in Israel. He’s anti-Zionist; he sees nationalism per se as the arch-enemy of Jewish values, which rest solidly on being a mensch, a good human being. He is gentle, wise, articulate; he has thought things through for himself, more or less alone, which has made his life in the yeshiva not so easy. He’s 29 years old. He thinks Zionism, including religious Zionism, has desecrated all that is sacred in God’s world.

For example, there’s the commandment “Thou shalt not steal.” I quoted it once to a settler who had just finished beating up my friend Guy to the point where we had to take him to hospital. The settler accused me of selecting Biblical verses that happen to fit my views. I told him that this commandment seems pretty unequivocal. The settler disagreed. Tonight Yehonatan tells me that there is a dispute among the sages as to whether stealing from a non-Jew is or is not allowed. Rabbi Yohanan, one of the more radical voices among the Talmudic masters, ruled that stealing from a non-Jew is one of the worst of all sins, hillul hashem, “profaning the name of God”—a sin that can only be punished by death. Yehonatan naturally sides with Rabbi Yohanan.

Muhammad brings us a supper of pita and labaneh and zaatar. It’s cool in the madafeh; today there was a little rain. We hear the standard litany of settler attacks, threats, constant harassment. Their latest tactic is bringing a herd of camels to the edge of the Palestinian homes, where they stay for hours; our activists position themselves between the houses and the camels; sometimes the police come to join the settlers, and a long drawn-out stalemate begins. And there is the perennial problem with filling up tankers with water from the ‘Auja stream while the settlers hover around and try to stop it.

Yehonatan recites by heart, into the darkness, the poem “Every Rose is an island,” by the great mystic Hebrew poetess Zelda. Here’s my translation:

Every rose is an island

         Every rose is an island
	 of the promised peace,
	 of peace eternal.

         In each rose lives
         a bird of sapphire
         named “And they will beat their swords….”  

         It seems so close,
         the light of the rose,
         so close its fragrance,
         so close the quiet of its leaves,
         so close
         that island—

         take a boat,
         cross the sea of fire.   
      

Meanwhile, the warplanes keep flying overhead, I hear them intermittently through the night. Before dawn, the stars are crystal-clear white flames.

In the early morning we go to protect the school children on their way to the bus—a frequent target of the settlers. After a while the infamous settler Gabriel, whom the Palestinians call Jibril, comes along. He stops to chat; presumably, he thinks Yehonatan is one of his ilk. He is in for a surprise. I can’t reproduce the whole remarkable conversation, but it went something like this (Yehonatan speaking gently, fluently, and firmly):

G: Good morning. It’s a glorious morning, isn’t it? The world is perfect. Look at this land, the land that is ours.

Y: Good morning. But the world is not quite perfect. There is an absence of good moral qualities (midot).

G: What good qualities are missing? Just look around at how glorious is the world God has given us.

Y: Yes, given us and given to others as well.

G: What “others” are there? There are no others. It’s ours.

Y: No, not only ours. And we are hurting those others and hurting God and ourselves.

G: That’s impossible. Why are you complaining? Everything is fine. In fact, wonderful. Just look around. We are conquering the land, our land.

Y: There is that absence of good qualities.

And so on for ten or fifteen minutes, Yehonatan holding his ground without rancor, Gabriel slowly losing his sick smile, more and more frustrated and menacing. For years we’ve seen his sadistic nature. When the “discussion” becomes wholly sterile, though Gabriel still wants to embrace his adversary, I pry Yehonatan away.

A few minutes after we leave for Jerusalem, we learn from the activists of the morning shift that the unbearable thugs from the organization Im Tirzu have turned up, to make life miserable. The camels are there, too.

Text and photographs: David Shulman © 2024.

Margaret Olin and David Shulman, The Bitter Landscapes of Palestine 2024. Order from Intellect Books, The University of Chicago Press or from an online or local bookseller.