The photo shows left-wing protesters demonstrating outside a conference held by Haaretz in London and extremist settlers who have broken into Husni’s compound–my Bedouin host where I sleep when I’m in the West Bank. They are insisting an Arab threw a rock and are arguing with the police to let them run amok in the houses.
What is the difference between these two groups?

If you answer, “What the hell do you mean? They’re at opposite poles of the political spectrum!” I say:

1. Extremist right-wing settlers believe that there should be no Palestine — the entire land should be Israel.
   Left-wing protesters believe that there should be no Israel. That 1948 was a mistake; it should be reversed and Israel should cease to exist.
2. Extremist settlers believe in violence as the best method to drive the Palestinians and Bedouin from their homes.
   In multiple Western nations, violent antisemitic attacks have escalated dramatically, with targeted shootings and fatal incidents recorded.
3. Extremist settlers think Israelis are all good; Palestinians are all terrorists.
   Protesters think Palestinians are good; all Israelis are terrorists. That’s why they’re protesting outside a Haaretz conference. They don’t distinguish between Haaretz and the extremist settlers, or me and you–we’re all evil.

I could go on, but you get my meaning. Both sides of the spectrum believe that their black-and-white judgments are absolutely right. Sure, most of the protesters aren’t violent, but if they had the power, they would take Israel away from us. That power has been given to extremist settlers by our rotten government. It’s their black and white certainty that is dangerous.
So are you one of those black and white people who know exactly what the truth is? Because I think most Israelis are aware of the enormous complexity of the situation. It has nothing to do with our political stance. Even if you think all Palestinians would kill us if they could, does that justify ethnic cleansing, whether through murder or eviction?
Even if you answer ‘Yes’ to that question, what about Jewish life? Now that there is a ceasefire in Gaza, West Bank settler violence is a major focal point of geopolitical tension. The behavior of these settlers is one of the core reasons for the surge in antisemitism across the Western world. In other words, Jews all over the diaspora are being attacked because of a marginalized group of extremists in the West Bank.
In addition, large numbers of IDF troops have to protect the settlements in the West Bank. One of the factors in our slow response to the tragedy of October 7 was because IDF troops had been relocated from the Gaza border to the West Bank in the days before October 7.
Some of my friends are settlers for financial reasons. But the extremist settlers, running amok and unchecked by our racist government, are creating future terrorists and destroying our country. Don’t stick your head in the sand because you don’t want to know. That’s shame. I am not ashamed any longer. I can look at those lefties who want to take Israel away from us and say, “You spread hatred about Israel and don’t do a damn thing to help the Palestinians. I love Israel and I AM helping.” If you want to feel proud of your country again, consider volunteering. Just once, to see what’s going on. And if you wonder how you will feel proud of your country, faced with the worst of us, it is because you will be working side by side with the best of us. Hundreds of Israelis are putting their safety at risk to fight ethnic cleansing, despite the long history of enmity between us and the people we are protecting. Are the Myanmar people stepping out of their comfort zones to protect the Rohinga? Are the Chinese trying to help the Uyghur? Israelis are special, and this work makes me proud to be Israeli again.
Even if my last Protective Presence shift felt a bit like Whack-a-Mole; settlers popping up at different places while we rush around after them, because there’s never enough volunteers. Unfortunately, we have to restrain the urge to whack them.
Two settlers roam around on donkeys; keffiyehs on their heads. Imitation isn’t always flattery. My sister has launched a fundraiser for new fencing, but at the moment, parts of the fence are piles of boards and rubbish. Penina and I stand by the derelict gate that serves as an entrance to Abu Waseem’s home. I like the feisty Penina; she plastered her car with photos of the hostages in Gaza and refused to take them down when the Palestinians complained. It is boiling hot, and we have been running after the settlers as they cruise along the rotten fences, noting the weak links. Suddenly they converge on us, urging their donkeys to run us down. But I like donkeys, and give them a sympathetic scratch as I stand my ground.
“DON’T TOUCH MY DONKEY!”
The settlers dismount, rolling cigarettes as they lean against a weak link. My desire to know my enemy has strengthened; mostly because I’m scared shitless by the violent stories I’ve heard. Surely it’s harder to hit someone who forges a connection?
Ignoring Penina’s protests, I approach them.
“You know why the Jews have survived for thousands of years, throughout all the persecution?”
No response.
“It’s because we were united. We are the same people, and if we become enemies we risk losing Israel. I love Israel just like you. Maybe I believe in the ‘whole’ of Israel too, but not by persecuting innocent people.”
The teenagers don’t even look at me. One of them has puppy-like eyes. He presses against the fence, testing it for weaknesses as he puffs on his rollie.

Image by Charlotte MendelPenina hovers by my side. “You think you can change them? They’re a cult. Isn’t that right, Nehoriah?”
The Puppy twitches. Torat Tzedek spends a lot of time trying to uncover their names; perhaps they hit the jackpot.
“Their handlers tell them not to talk to us,” Penina continues. “They’re like puppets.”
I wish Penina would bugger off.
I look at Nehoriah’s belligerent profile. “For thousands of years we were the ‘unwanted other’ and we were expelled from countries across Europe through persecution and violence. How can we do the same thing to our ‘unwanted other’?”
Nehoriah—probably pissed that Penina called him a puppet—turns to me. “If they were stronger than us, we’d all be dead.”
A response! I’m so delighted I forget that I’ve been sweating like a pig running after this jerk for the past two hours. I resist the urge to press his hand tenderly. “And you want to go down to their level? Aren’t we better than that?”
The boys slouch towards their donkeys. Penina looks at me incredulously. “If our Bedouin hosts heard you say that…”
I know, I know, but when a person feels heard, maybe they will listen. And maybe… deescalate violence…
 
 

I cannot sleep the night before my second shift. I throw up around midnight. Nerves, and too much vodka. Why does it fill me with horror to go back? Most of the time I am filming kids younger than my own. Statistically, I’m more likely to be killed driving to the West Bank, than in it. But on my first day, a senior activist and a Palestinian drove me to a lookout point to see the new outposts, sprinkled like salt over the imposing mountains around Mukhmas. “I was picking olives in the Valley when a group of settlers beat me up,” the Palestinian said. “Then they burnt six homes. Nobody lives there now. Their violence escalates until they achieve their goal and drive us from our homes.”

The violence escalates. So far in Taybeh, where I work, they’ve been sending teenagers to cut fences and drive their flocks up to the houses. They try to cut water and electricity lines. They come every day, twice a day. The Palestinian children leave home at 6 a.m. so they can get to school before the settlers arrive. The families lock themselves in their houses. They barely leave their compounds. But despite the misery of their lives, they aren’t leaving their homes. “I was born here, and my father before me,” my host Husni says. “I will never leave.”

But the violence escalates. In the end, won’t they leave? When lives are threatened. To save their children. At some point the settlers will decide: “OK, this isn’t working. Time to go to the next level of terror!” My role is passive, limited to unviolent reaction. They call the shots. Their goal is to expel the Palestinians and I am an obstacle. How long until I have to place my body between them and the children I am growing fond of, instead of a fence? How long until they beat me up?
​
I and my partner Shai are outside Husni and Fatima’s house; two teenagers and a tiny kid push their herd of goats and camels smack-dab against the fence. We shake rocks in plastic bottles to try to move the herd away from the fence. The goats don’t like the noise, but the camels don’t care. The settlers get mad. “Don’t touch our animals!” they repeat, thrusting their phones in our faces. The tiny boy sucks his thumb as he kicks Shai. Then he turns to me, his cherubic face grinning. “Why are you cursing me?” he asks, sweetly.

“Sweetheart, I would never curse you,” I reply, shocked. Later I learn the purpose of such talk. Just like we film them constantly so they won’t cut fences or throw rocks, they also film us. At first I didn’t understand why they came so close to me, nose-to-nose, as I stumbled backwards over the rocky terrain.  “Don’t come near me. Don’t come near me,” they repeat over and over.
“What do you mean? You’re the one in my face. Are you filming my blackheads?”
“Don’t come near me. Don’t come near me.”
​
Later I learn that they post snippets of their videos in an attempt to show we are the aggressors. Who the hell is going to believe that? Are we coming to their compound to bother them? Don’t answer; it’s a rhetorical question. People believe what they want.

Still, they’re just kids. They’ve been brought up in a cult that teaches them all Palestinians want to kill us. That the Arabs have lots of other lands and Israel is ours. That God commands: “And you shall take possession of the land and settle in it, for I have given you the land to possess.” They’re just re-taking their own land, like God wants, FFS.
​
Shai has taken me, the newbie, under his wing. “You shouldn’t speak to them at all,” he informs me. There’s no point. They’re part of a cult; they’re all brainwashed.”

A rock sails between us and we snap back to attention, phones up. The kids zip around the fence in different directions, trying to lose us so they can cut it. We split and I focus on keeping up, sweating like a Canadian in the boiling heat. “I can see you, I’m filming!” I yell, pointing my phone in the right direction even though I have no idea what I’m filming. It takes all my focus to run over the rocks without falling. Luckily, they get sick of the game before I keel over.

The teenagers roll cigarettes. I sink onto a stone in relief. Shai tells me how the kids hit and kick if they outnumber us. Or when they get us alone. “In February the Palestinians asked us to come to Qursa because settlers were attacking them,” Shai says. “So we went.  A group of masked settlers ran towards us with clubs. They started beating my partners—one of them was a woman in her 70s. Then they came for me. They broke bones all over my body. We were airlifted to hospital and I spent months recovering; my partner even longer.”

The violence escalates… “Are the Palestinians who called you still…”
“No. They abandoned their homes.” …until they achieve their goal…
For a moment I can’t speak. Finally, I whisper, “But the attackers weren’t kids?”
Shai nods towards the thumb-sucker. “That’ll be him in a few years.”

Labelling groups of people is what racism is. Americans enslaved Black people because they believed that “all” blacks were inferior. Nazis killed Jews because they believed “all” Jews were parasites. Settlers persecute Palestinians because they believe “all” Palestinians want to slaughter us. A lot of Israelis think this too, and our sad history over the past 78 years doesn’t reflect a strong desire for peace.  But the Arabs I’m living with would do anything to end their miserable lives. Anything for peace. When you live with the humans, instead of reading about our awful governments in the newspaper, you begin to glimpse the immense complexity. “All” these kids are irredeemable?

I get up to talk to them, but Shai pulls me back. “Are you crazy? I’ve been doing this for years and you don’t have a clue what you’re doing.”
I wish Shai would bugger off, but I am a newbie and I don’t want to antagonize my seniors. I subside back onto my rock. But I’m curious. Most humans see themselves as good, and I want to know how the settlers can define themselves as good.
Now I have a new goal: Know My Enemy. Learn just how unilateral violence can escalate.

​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.