A Zionist among Palestinians by Hillel Bardin

Author:Hillel Bardin [Bardin, Hillel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, History, Middle East, Israel, Social & Cultural Studies, Political Science, Biography & Memoir
ISBN: 9780253002235
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 2012-06-26T04:00:00+00:00

One night at midnight I received a phone call from Jamil. That afternoon, youths had burned tires and clashed with the police. At night, the police returned and began hauling the men out of many of the village’s homes, taking them to a large fenced-in yard and beating them. Even our friend Mohammed Sbeh had been taken. I ran to the holding place, but before I could enter, a policeman demanded to see my identification. Instead of showing him my regular ID card, I showed him my identification as a special policeman in the civil guard. I demanded to see where my friend was being held. The policeman lied and said it was a closed military area, and it was forbidden for me to go there. Still, I managed to get close enough to see rows of Palestinians sitting on the ground, with their hands behind their necks, just like prisoners of war. The policeman prevented me from getting closer, so I shouted, “Mohammed, it’s Hillel. What are they doing to you?” I knew he couldn’t answer me, but I wanted the border policemen to know that there was an Israeli around, so they might hesitate to keep on beating them. Veronika and Professor Shlomo Elbaz arrived with a few reporters, and my son Noam drove up in our car. And I did learn later that from the time we arrived, the beatings stopped.

The Palestinians were finally released, and we went home. There was an article about this event in the next day’s Jerusalem Post. Later, I read an article in which a Palestinian criticized dialogues for being just a lot of talk, but he cited the incident of our intervention to help a colleague as something of true value.

The next day Jamil took me to see two brothers, in their forties, who had been beaten by the border police in their home. One policeman would hold a Palestinian’s arm extended, while a second policeman would give him a tremendous whack on the forearm with his club. Both brothers had been to the hospital and had plaster casts on their arms. They showed me their X-rays, with identical fractures across their forearms.

The dialogue sessions in Jabel Mukabber lacked sufficient Israeli leadership, and when the lone Israeli leader left Jerusalem, the group fell apart. But Jamil and Halima remained good friends of mine, and I was always happy to see them when the occasion arose.

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