Ezra Nawi. A Baghdadi Jew, born in Israel, fluent in Arabic. A man like and unlike all others.
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October 21, 2020. Ein Sukut. Text and Images by David Shulman

Wednesday seems to be the day the settler has set aside for harassing Palestinian shepherds. That’s what Ahmad says, and he should know. Last Wednesday, October 14, it ended in murder.
Continue readingHollywood Endings: The Northern and Southern Jordan Valley. Text and photographs: Margaret Olin
Before the fires: Al-‘Auja, July 22, 2017
Fields were burning in the fall of 2017, but in late July the story was different.
Continue readingMay 31, 2020 Sumarin family, Silwan. Texts and photographs: David Shulman

Job—Ayyub in Arabic—the most tragic figure in the Hebrew Bible, lived and suffered in Silwan, in east Jerusalem, as the Silwanis proudly say. His well, Bir Ayyub, is just down the road from the Dung Gate that leads to the Haram al-Sharif and the Western Wall. Near the top of that hill, in the Wadi Hilwe neighborhood, stands the stone house of the Sumarin family. It happens to be adjacent to the visitors’ center that the settler group El’ad has created in order to indoctrinate schoolchildren and tourists in their nationalist narrative about Silwan, which they call the City of David. They mean King David, the Psalmist. Settlers like to tell their visitors that he walked the streets of Wadi Hilwe, with their barbed-wire settler enclaves and guards carrying machine guns. I rather doubt that there was such a person, but occasionally, over the years, in the Silwan demonstrations, amidst the tear gas and the stun grenades, I’ve caught a glimpse of a heartsick poet hovering nearby, someone like Job.
Continue readingFebruary 28, 2020 Nu‘ema, text by David Shulman
I missed the pogrom at ‘Auja west, or ‘Auja Fok, last Friday, though I was just a few kilometers away with the shepherds. Some thirty armed settler thugs descended on the village at midday, wielding sticks and metal bars, creating havoc, some of which you may see here, in this video from Yaniv Junam.
Continue readingJanuary 14, 2020. Al-‘Auja. Text: David Shulman
December 14, 2019. Magha’ir al-‘Abid. Text and (nearly all) photographs by David Shulman

In Memoriam: Neville Symington
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It’s a tiny dot deep in the desert, hidden in a wild sweep of hills and rock and narrow goat-tracks, brown-beige-gold. It’s the end of the world. A rough road takes you there. There’s a bigger village, Isfay, on the ridge above it; they have a health clinic and a wind turbine. Magha’ir al-‘Abid, “Caves of the Slaves,” has a few dozen souls, most of whom live in caves. Each of the caves has a carved stone façade, and inside they’re well appointed, clean, warm on this sunny mid-winter day. Outside you hear wind rippling over sand and the gentle bleating of goats and sheep.
Continue readingNovember 11, 2019: ‘Ein Rashshash. Text by David Shulman.

We are three—Guy, Nina, and me. We reach Rashshash with the dawn. Tea is served. How are things? “Settlers at our throat every day.”

Photograph: David Shulman, 2019
Continue readingBlind justice – and blindness
Al-‘Auja Jordan Valley, April 20, 2018. In the back of the police car, a newly arrested Palestinian shepherd was about to be driven to the police station, blindfolded.

Nothing Happens: Three stories from the South Hebron Hills

Nothing can happen in many different ways. When it does happen it is always eventful, full of tension and suspense. Sometimes nothing takes a very long time, and often a lot of work to happen. Here are three brief stories:
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