A-Infos (en) Israel (Palestine), Media, My Story: Olive harvest 5769 - SARAH KREIMER , THE JERUSALEM POST

"In moments, five settlers - women and men - materialized along the path
and sauntered over to the trees. One of the Palestinians, a settler and
a couple of anarchists whipped out cameras and began filming. Not long
ago, the Israeli organization B'tselem had begun providing cameras to
Palestinians - to document human rights abuses around their homes in the
West Bank. Now the settlers were answering in kind, turning the battle
of olives into a battle of narratives. How many anarchists does it take
to harvest olives, I thought? Two to pick, and three to document the
experience for the BBC."

"Where are we going?" I asked Arik, as we drove out of Jerusalem in his
beat up Subaru, with three other volunteers: an older gentleman and a
newlywed couple.

I was beginning the New Year of 5769 with a practical mitzva: serving as
a "human shield" between Palestinian families, trying to harvest their
olive trees in the West Bank, and Israeli settlers, trying to prevent
them. My old friend, Rabbi Arik Ascherman, director of Rabbis for Human
Rights, had invited me to come with him - to help in a small grove of
trees in the southern West Bank. I hadn't asked for details; scores of
volunteers were being assigned daily to olive groves throughout the West
Bank - depending on the readiness of Palestinian owners, the weather and
the permission of the Israeli Civil Administration. I was happy to be a
foot-soldier, and help out wherever I was needed.

"We'll be in Hebron," answered Arik, driving slowly past the Beit Jala
checkpoint.

Hebron?! Why hadn't I asked before? A year ago I had visited the old
city of Hebron, home of the ancient Tomb of the Patriarchs, burial site
of Abraham - the Father claimed by Judaism and Islam. For weeks after, I
was haunted by images of humiliation. The Arab bazaar shuttered; Israeli
combat soldiers patrolling its eerie, silent streets. Hebrew graffiti,
signed with a Star of David - "Policeman, Soldier: I hate you; Death to
Traitors" - scrawled on a rusted door. Two Palestinian girls with book
bags hurrying to school, heads down under a barrage of foul language
from Jewish pupils outside Beit Hadassah. I wondered if I could still
get out of the car and go back to Jerusalem.

"We are going to help the Jabari family," Arik continued, as we drove
through the rocky hills. "They only have a few olive trees, but their
land is next to the fence of the Jewish settlement in Hebron. Only once
in the last seven years have they been able to harvest their olives. In
other years, the settlers kept them from reaching their trees and took
their olives. We are opening the harvest there, so that doesn't happen."
As we drove deeper into the Hebron hills, my dread mixed with the joy of
a bright, crisp fall day. The clean greens and browns were stunning. The
yoreh, first rain, had poured down just two days before, washing the
dusty trees and ancient rock terraces after a dry summer, and signaling
the start of the olive harvest.

Into my head popped the new jingle of the West Bank settlers' media
campaign to convince secular Israelis of their own historic connection
to the land of the Bible: "Judea and Samaria - the story of every Jew."
Just yesterday in synagogue we had read Genesis 22, about Abraham
walking over these Judean hills with his son Isaac, on his way to carry
out the divine command: "Take now thy son, thine only son, Isaac, and
get thee into the land of Moriah and offer him there for a burnt
offering." Yes, guilt, sacrifice and incomprehensible requests from God
were part of every Jew's story. Especially in these hills.

"We want to go in quickly, harvest the olives and leave," Arik
continued, as we reached the yellow security gate of Kiryat Arba. "We
have informed the Civil Administration of our plans. Under a 2006 High
Court order, the police are required to allow the harvest and protect
the Palestinians. They don't have to let us help, however. If any
settlers come to disturb us, don't interact with them; just keep
working. Our goal is to help the Jabaris harvest their olives."

Seeing an Israeli car driven by a bearded rabbi in a knitted kippa, the
security guard raised the gate and waved us through. Leaving the
biblical landscape behind, we entered a land of well-maintained streets
and trim parks, landscaped in the style of any successful development
town in Israel. Arik phoned his contact person from the
Palestinian-Jewish organization, Ta'ayush.

"They and the Anarchists will be working with us today as well," Arik
informed us.

My dread returned. The Rabbis and Ta'ayush were committed to non-violent
discipline; but the Anarchists, young Israeli Jews, known for their
weekly confrontations with the Border Police, as they protested the
route of the separation barrier, might not bow their heads in the face
of provocations. I thought of my two teenage boys still sleeping at
home, and hoped they would not be getting a call this afternoon to come
visit their 52-year-old mother in the hospital.

We passed out of another security gate, bumped over potholes on the main
Palestinian road and turned up a steep dirt path into the Jabaris
driveway. We were in Hebron.

THE TA'AYUSH leader gave a quick briefing among the brambles outside the
Jabari home. Don't answer to provocation, take the phone number of our
lawyer's contact person, watch the kids - they'll try to steal the
olives. I wanted to ask more questions: what if the police don't protect
us, what if there's a mob, how far from here to a hospital? But the
group was off - 20 scruffy activists, a few members of the Jabari
family, a TV news film crew, and a couple of Palestinian residents of
Tel Rumeida - tramping along a run-down stone terrace toward our goal.
Six lone olive trees squeezed between the fence of Givat Ha'avot, a
Jewish settlement in Hebron, on the hill to our left and the main road
to Kiryat Arba on our right. A crow cawing broke the pre-Shabbat quiet
of Friday, as we spread worn burlap bags next to a brick path under the
trees and began to pick.

In moments, five settlers - women and men - materialized along the path
and sauntered over to the trees. One of the Palestinians, a settler and
a couple of anarchists whipped out cameras and began filming. Not long
ago, the Israeli organization B'tselem had begun providing cameras to
Palestinians - to document human rights abuses around their homes in the
West Bank. Now the settlers were answering in kind, turning the battle
of olives into a battle of narratives. How many anarchists does it take
to harvest olives, I thought? Two to pick, and three to document the
experience for the BBC.

An Israeli police officer and two helmeted IDF soldiers, carrying M-16s,
joined the settlers. Whose side are they on, I wondered, peering out
through the olive branches as I picked, trying to make myself busy and
invisible. Would they defend the Palestinians' right to pick their
trees; or ban them - for security reasons? I stared at the face of one
of the young soldiers, standing loosely on the path, expressionless. He
couldn't have been more than two years older than my 17-year-old son.
Would Shai, due to be drafted next year into the IDF, be standing here
next year instead of this boy? How would he behave? I shuddered.

"They're not working, they're filming. They can't stay here!" complained
a settler to the soldiers, pointing to some anarchists. No reaction.
Fifteen meters away, Arik spoke to the TV reporter. A settler pushed
next to him, chanting "Murderer… murderer… murderer… murderer…" Arik
doggedly spoke on. The cameras filmed. More settlers arrived, squeezing
in tight among the trees, pressing their bodies close to ours, spraying
abuse. "From Auschwitz to Arabs!" A settler thrust his camera in my
face. My pulse raced. I continued picking, hoping my face looked calm.
Suddenly my pail jumped, slapped from underneath; the olives,
painstakingly gathered, spilled on the rocky ground. I whipped around to
see a black-bearded man slinking away, a slight smile on his lips.
"Hey!" I yelled. No one listened.

Under another tree, a woman with a baby strapped to her breast grabbed
the pail of olives held by the newlywed volunteer, and overturned it.
Protecting his wife, the young groom removed the woman's hand from the
pail. Instantly, settlers swarmed around the couple, pushing, kicking.
Scores of police and Border Guards appeared. The newlyweds broke free
and fled across the field. A pack of settler men chased the couple to
the door of the Jabari home.

Twenty border policemen and police stationed themselves between the
settlers and the pickers. "The court says they're allowed to harvest," a
policeman growled to a large settler, pushing to get next to our tree.
The policeman shifted his body to block the man. I breathed a sigh of
relief. "Hey, look out, you'll damage the tree," yelled the meaty
settler in a proprietary tone to an anarchist high in the tree, shaking
the upper branches. I remembered that the settlers had picked the
Jabari's olives for themselves over the last years. A black-haired
teenage settler stood, sullen, beneath the tree, watching.

"Homos!" taunted a long-skirted woman in a dusty green head scarf,
leaning herself against the gnarled trunk of the tree I was harvesting.
A long-haired young man scooped up olives from the burlap on the ground
at her feet. "Go back to where you came from!" The young anarchist
clenched his jaw and kept his head down. "You have your olives, and we
have our children," she wheedled. "In a few years, you will be gone and
the right-wing Orthodox will be here! We already have Jerusalem." I felt
invaded, claustrophobic; I wanted to smack this woman. "Hey!" I called
to the police idling next to us. "Get her out of here!"

"Come along," the policeman chided, escorting her away from the tree.
The young black-haired settler tensed his shoulders.

A gray-bearded man, wearing kippa and tzitzit, approached slowly,
proclaiming, "Whoever helps Arabs will die this year, God willing!" For
a moment our eyes locked; I felt the curse descend on my head, and seep,
unwanted, into my body, echoing yesterday's High Holy Day prayers: "On
Rosh Hashana it will be inscribed and on Yom Kippur it will be sealed…
who shall live and who shall die…"

I did not come to Hebron to die! I protested silently. The man continued
on, circling the five scrawny olive trees we were harvesting, darkly
invoking God's name. "Arik, can we leave now?" Reaching for a dusty
branch, my hand shook; my adrenaline was draining away. Arik, more
principled than I, picked on. Finally, trees bare, he declared our
departure. The police stood guard to keep the settlers away from us on
our way back to the Jabari home with the olives.

AS THE BOLT to the Jabari's front gate was pushed closed, I took a deep
breath. We had succeeded in the olive harvest; the Israeli security
forces had, after an initial delay, protected us. We were safe.

Only then, inside the yard, did I find out that the newlywed couple had
been taken by the police from the Jabari home, following the settlers'
attack, and were being detained at the station in the nearby Jewish
settlement in Hebron. One of the anarchists somehow went on-line, and
reported that a story had been posted on Israel's leading news Web site,
Ynet, of an "attack by a left-wing provocateur" on settlers in Hebron.

As the Jabaris sifted through the meager olive harvest, spread on the
bare cement floor, the anarchists sifted through their filmed
documentation of the incident, and found footage showing the settlers'
attack on our volunteers. Against the advice of the anarchists, who
warned that the settlers would stone our car, we drove into the
settlement to the police station to deliver the evidence (which had been
carefully copied onto a memory stick) and release the couple.

Uneasily, I waited in the car with another volunteer, surveying the
quiet street for any sudden movement; ready to duck, or gun the car into
motion. Suddenly, the black-haired teenage settler, who had stood
silently by my olive tree, approached. His hands were empty, but his
eyes darted from side to side. He paused, his face next to the open
window. The blood thumped in my ears. "I'm sorry," he mumbled, and
slipped away. I stared after him. I wanted to call him back, to make
sure I had heard right, but he was gone.

Arik and the newlyweds got into the car. We drove out the Kiryat Arba
gate back into the landscape of our forefathers and I realized that,
although we had succeeded in helping the Jabaris harvest their olives,
the settlers had won this battle of narratives. The woman's words echoed
in my head: You have your olives; we have our children. In a few years,
you will be gone and we will be here.

I wondered where the silent black-haired youth will be in a few years.
If Judea and Samaria are the story of every Jew, we are all living a
tragedy.

The writer is a member of the board of directors of the Association for
Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) and is working on a book about visions and
divisions in Israeli society.
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