My First Day–A Comedy of Errors
My name is Charlotte Mendel and I am a Canadian Israeli doing Protective Presence in the West Bank with Torat Tzedek, founded by Rabbi Arik Ascherman (https://protectivepresence.org.il/?lang=en).
Right now, extremist settlers are targeting a cluster of Palestinian families on the outskirts of Taybeh. The settlers aim to intimidate and terrorize the families until they leave their homes.
The settlers live in an illegal, recently-erected outpost close to the families they want to evict, but the police and army rarely intervene. Throughout the West Bank, the main defence for Palestinians is Protective Presence, who stay with the families in shifts, 24/7. How can we protect them? We film all illegal activity and the settlers don’t want their violence caught on film.
I stay with different families—the photo was taken outside Husni’s home.
If we are outnumbered, we cannot always film their activities. Husni and the other families have had their fences destroyed and their water tanks dumped.
“My family served in the Israeli army,” Ahmed, a young Bedouin, told me. “I don’t understand why they are doing this to me.”
Husni is an older gentleman—his wife is the lady lying on the bed in the photo. “Twenty years ago the settlers used to drink tea with us,” he said. “Now they want us gone, or dead.”
I experience Protective Presence like a nightmare; I have been hit, kicked; rocks have been thrown at me. Constant intimidation. But above all, the human capacity for cruelty fills me with despair. Our incapacity to learn and grow. If the Jews, who were expelled from countless European countries as the ‘unwanted other’, can justify doing *exactly* the same thing—does it mean the human race is incapable of change?
However, I’m getting ahead of myself: first blog—first day—which actually had a funny side! The main point of my orientation was: “We are never violent. We are like Gandhi.” OK. Pretty straightforward. On my first day I was partnered with a senior activist. When two teenage settlers appeared with their herds and approached the fence, we charged towards them, armed with our phones. The settlers spent some time rushing back and forth to different parts of the fence in an attempt to lose us so they could cut the fence without being filmed. The problem was, they were both about 40 years younger than us. Still, we did our best, sprinting over the rocky ground and praying we wouldn’t fall flat on our faces. But what importance and attention we were granting these youth, as they called the shots and we stumbled in their wake! Apparently my senior partner felt the same way. He suddenly opened his mouth and bellowed, “You spawn of the devil! You screwed-up little shits!” A flood of incriminations streamed from his mouth. I looked at him in astonishment.
“I thought we were supposed to be Gandhi,” I ventured, when I could get a word in edge-wise.
“I’m not punching them to kingdom come like they deserve, am I?” he bellowed.
Enlightenment dawned. “Oh,” I said. “You meant we’re supposed to be *Jewish* Gandhis!”
Later that day I was given the task of helping a young Palestinian lodge a complaint at the Sha’ar Binyamin police station. Let’s call him Bashar. The settlers had stolen Bashar’s entire herd of goats, but his security cameras had caught the theft on film. Palestinians aren’t allowed to enter Sha’ar Binyamin until a police car comes to the gate to pick them up. But I can go in, so my job was to trot back and forth, cajoling/begging/demanding the police to come to the gate and pick Bashar up so he could lodge his complaint.
At first the police said they’d be along soon, so I spent much time sitting by Bashar at the gate, waiting. It seemed odd to be given such a task by myself on my first day, and neither of us could speak a lick of the other’s language. But we smiled a lot, and he showed me videos of his goats. It was a fine herd, and I made appreciative noises. In one video, he seemed to be brandishing a stick to drive the goats out of the barn. It seemed a bit aggressive to me, but different folks, different strokes, and I wasn’t going to open my privileged mouth to pontificate about superior animal rights in Canada. I continued to make encouraging, appreciative noises. Then I pulled out my own phone and showed Bashar videos of my own goats (I had a hobby farm in Nova Scotia).
In-between goat bonding, I trotted back and forth to the police station. “We’ve been waiting for two hours,” I pleaded. “It will only take you two minutes to pick him up.”
“We have more important cases!” barked the police officer. “You want us to prioritize picking up a Palestinian when we have serious crimes happening?”
On my way out, I walked around the building. There were about 10 officers lounging around outside, smoking.
After some time, I went back inside. “Please,” I said. “We’ve been waiting four hours. There won’t be an Arabic translator here for the rest of the week.”
“If you bother us again we’ll have you thrown out!” yelled the police officer.
I felt that I had failed, and dawdled back to Bashar with my head low. He was sitting in a car with a friend; he’d had enough and wanted to go home.
His friend, luckily, spoke English. “That’s how it is for us,” he said. “Since October 7th, they can do anything they want and there’s nothing we can do about it. You saw the video; we have the proof.”
“The video of the theft? Oh no, I didn’t see that,” I said.
The two men exchanged puzzled looks. “Bashar said he showed you.”
With a rush of disbelief, I realized that the man with the stick that I’d assumed was Bashar, was in fact the settler stealing the goats in the middle of the night.
Instead of making cooing noises of appreciation, I should have been emitting squeals of horror and disbelief!
So ended my first day. Stay tuned for the second episode of this comedy of errors and failures next week.
