Day 7 - Colonizers
I woke up on the ground with a goat a few feet from my head. After breakfast with the brothers I spent nightwatch with, two unidentified planes flew very close to us. They weren’t jeesh or mustawtin (military or police), but they definitely weren’t Palestinian. I think they had a camera. A few minutes later, a car with Israeli plates came down the road. I assumed it was settlers, but the family didn’t seem nervous so L said it was probably JVA. JVA stands for Jordan Valley Activists, a group of Israeli “activists” who want to feel better about being colonizers. They drive around to Palestinian families in the Jordan Valley like they’re neighbors and not part of the Occupation. My understanding is that many of the Palestinians tolerate it because at least they act polite and nominally disagree with settler violence. Four Israelis got out of the car, greeted the brothers, and approached the tent we were in. They said hi, I said hi back. They asked me my name, and I said “I’d rather not share that.” An older Israeli man said hi to L and she said hi back, but ignored his other questions about where she came from and what languages she spoke. L and I left the tent and sat a few meters away. It was awkward for the Palestinians; they did not like that we left the tent because they felt like bad hosts. They aren’t. We just want nothing to do with liberal Zionist colonizers, which we explained once they left. The JVA spoke with the Palestinian brothers for 20 minutes or so, and then walked away. They stopped where we were to lecture us. The older man said “If you cannot say hello to another human being, you are not respecting humanity” and “This has been our homeland for centuries.” I wanted to laugh but he kept going on and on, repeating the same things, saying how rude we were for not talking to them (we did exchange pleasantries, but clearly that wasn’t good enough for him). A woman said “It is immoral to not distinguish between good and very good.” No idea what that means. Then they walked away. Fuck the JVA. As the prophet once said, you’re not a colleague, you’re a fucking colonizer. Alhamdulillah.
We got picked up shortly after the JVA left and taken back to Puppy House. We had about 7 hours before we got our next assignments (but I ended up leaving early), so I used the time to sleep, eat, shower, and read. I volunteered for a different kind of assignment at a place I’ll call Netflix. Netflix is further away and requires more watching due to its proximity to a settlement, so shifts there are multiple days at a time. My new partner, M, has already been on shift for three days and will stay with two more for me. M was the first person at Netflix when they started asking for volunteers a month ago, so she knows them well. L and E drove me to Netflix (which took longer because we got lost), but we found M and she walked me there.
Netflix is a more tense area than other placements. It comprises part of a village, but this section is mostly one large family and their various farms. At the top of the dirt road winding up their properties is a hill, and atop that hill is a brand new settler outpost 300 meters away from where the family sleeps.
The outpost atop the hill, as seen from the family’s porch where I’m doing nightwatch.
Outposts are baby settlements. When an Israeli or American decided they want to steal more Palestinian land, they find a spot they like, build some shacks and barbed wire fences, and claim it as their own. Outposts are illegal according to Israeli law and international law, but nothing is done about them. Israel outright encourages them. About 20 freaks live at this outpost, including two of its founders, Moshe Sharvit and Ezri Tubi (sometimes spelled ToBe). Moshe Sharvit is such a piece of trash, even the EU sanctioned him with a travel ban. Shoutout to the EU website for listing his birthday, which is coincidentally today. Hope you never get any older Moshe ;) Among his list of accomplishments are multiple settlements started like this one and an incident last year where he threatened and called the police on a BBC crew while they were looking for footage of settler violence in the West Bank. Huge fumble. Ezri Tubi is a manosphere-adjacent influencer, someone who Google AI calls an “activist” for some reason.
Note where Google AI writes “He produces documentary series and short films documenting Jewish farms and outposts in Judea and Samaria.”
ToBe got his followers to crowd fund the outpost and the sheep currently being used to graze of the Netflix family’s land. Two truly upstanding citizens of the most moral nation on Earth.
Moshe Starvit
Ezri ToBe
M says that settler contact is daily here. Not only do they use the family’s road to get up to their ugly ass sheds, but they also frequently blare sirens or other sounds to annoy the family. They’ve thrown rocks, called the police, beat up the elderly in the family, stole a water tank, and cut their pipes (there is a water shortage in this area). I didn’t see much tonight, although the police did drive up to the outpost without doing anything to us. Multiple settlers drove up and down from the hill, always recording us as they went.
A settler vehicle coming down from the outpost.
So far nothing of concern, but the nightwatch is young. The family members are new to having volunteers around, so they actually stay up with M and I. I’m assuming at some point they’ll need sleep and let us take that burden off of them, but I can understand why they want to be here too.
When I got here, M filled me in on everything and I got to meet the family members. They have younger children, one of whom was carrying a toy gun than looked fairly realistic, which felt like a horrible idea to me. One of them messed around on my phone for awhile.
Me, from behind the thumb of a Palestinian child.
It was a good time. I like it here. The family is welcoming and the accommodations are nice. They love playing Instagram reels from their phones at full volume all at the same time (I have a friend who’d fit right in; you know who you are). At one point, a group from another volunteer organization called UCPiP (Unarmed Civilian Protection in Palestine) showed up. They claim to do a similar thing to us, but they seem more oriented towards Zionist-skeptical liberals who are looking for a moral AirBnB. That’s not an exaggeration. M said that yesterday they came to do nightwatch, but none of them had a clue what they were doing. Instead they all showed up in pajamas, instantly went to bed, didn’t wake up when it was their turn for nightwatch, and ate breakfast in the morning without doing any work at all. The UCP that showed up today had received no training whatsoever. They literally got off the plane yesterday and came straight here today. We had one bootleg Michael Moore from Minnesota instead of Michigan, one Australian lady wearing a keffiyeh she clearly bought from Amazon and a headlamp like she was going hiking, and a Canadian lady who (upon kindly being told by M that she had no idea what she was doing) seemed interested in doing what we do. Thankfully, after I told our Palestinian coordinator that they showed up, she somehow convinced the family to kick them out. M and I were relieved of our fear that they would take all the blankets and pillows like they did yesterday. That’s all for now.