Hebron antics

It seems like every day there are reports of settler violence in and around Hebron. (Well, not, that is, in the Australian press; our news is sanitised to reflect the Zionist viewpoint.) They throw a boy off a roof here, they beat up an old woman there, they attack children on their way to school - it has become routine.

And it's not only ordinary people they terrorize. Yesterday a group of settler thugs attacked a vehicle containing a delegation of British diplomats, visiting the city under the auspices of Breaking the Silence, an organisation of Israeli ex-servicemen dedicated to exposing the evils of the occupation. An earlier delegation of European parliamentarians had been subjected to similar treatment, being physically beaten, to cries of "Nazis, Nazis." These people are relentless, empowered by their belief that they are a Chosen People and that all of Palestine is theirs by divine decree.

You see, they don't want the outside world to observe what they are doing in Hebron.

A walk through the streets of the old city is an education: it's exhilarating and colourful, throbbing with the life of a traditional Palestinian market. However, many of the shops remain closed, their doors welded shut by the Israeli military since the settler invasion of the old city. The local people have put up netting and mesh to protect themselves from the rubbish and excrement thrown down on them by their unwelcome neighbours from the houses above.

If only they would go back to New Jersey! But of course they won't and, like a festering sore, their ideology of race supremacy and hate continues to pollute this once-beautiful city.