If someone is going to warn you to stay away from your own land, is it better to hear it spoken fluently in your native language? So it appeared in Gawawis last Saturday, at least for a moment.*
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The village of ‘Ein Samiya is no more.
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Dawn. Several children still asleep in their blankets, on the ground outside the house. Good desert smells. The older girls are beginning their chores: water has to be brought from the tanker; milk is being churned, or perhaps pasteurized, in what could be a repurposed washing-machine. There is a new baby, two months old, sleeping in her crib. Ghazal, maybe a year and a half old, holds a glass of tea in her hand while her eyes, obsidian black, study Yigal and me with unwavering interest. Then a smile. Nadia asks if we’ve been well. Yigal answers with the blessing: “‘aishin min shafek,” “We come alive when we see you.”
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So far, there is no doubt that we are winning. We will stop the thugs and killers of this so-called government in their tracks.
Continue readingGood news is especially precious in a period of dense darkness and stark human evil like the one we are experiencing now in Israel. The Sumarin family in Silwan, in East Jerusalem, has won the right to live in their own home.
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April 6-8, 1903 (Julian calendar), Kishinev, Bessarabia: A mob, led partly by Orthodox Russian priests, descends upon the town, killing 49 Jews, wounding scores more, raping many Jewish women, burning down Jewish homes. The local police stand by, watching, making no attempt to stop the massacre. Some of the Jewish men fight back with the meager tools in their possession. Children see their parents murdered before their eyes. Shock waves engulf the Jewish communities of eastern Europe and beyond. In response, many Jewish young men join the anti-Czarist revolutionaries; others leave for Palestine to build a new life for the Jews. Bialik, the national Hebrew poet, writes an epic poem on the massacre.
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Umm Rashid, the most intrepid of the ‘Auja shepherdesses, has sold off most of her sheep and goats. I don’t have all the details; a close friend of hers sold her herd a few months earlier. I assume she couldn’t take any more of the ceaseless harassment, beatings, and threats from the settlers. But I don’t think this is the end of the story.
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Jibrin says, “I hardly ever sleep. Maybe an hour in the night.”
“Because of the settlers?” I say.
“Yes. I’m afraid. A thousand times they have told me they will slaughter me.”
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