Turmus Aiya was Jewish terror - It's time we call it that - comment

When I went to visit the homes burned by Jewish terrorists in the Palestinian village of Turmus Aiya, a stone’s throw from Shiloh, I made the mistake of wearing a white shirt; it quickly got covered in black soot.

When approximately 400 settlers arrived at the Palestinian village on Wednesday evening - which comprises 80-90% joint-US citizens - it left what looks like a warzone. An otherwise quaint village is marked with blackness - inside the homes and outside on the ground. The attacks were ostensibly in response to a Palestinian terror attack that killed four and injured four in a gas station in Eli, less than 10 kilometers away. In Turmus Aiya, 27-year-old Omar Qattin was killed; his family in the US heard about his death over the phone, and flew in for the funeral.

As someone who grew up in a religious-Zionist home, in a settlement, it took me a long time to wrap my head around the very act itself. As well, I had never been in a Palestinian village in the West Bank before; there was never a framework for it. I wasn’t sure I would want to visit Turmus Aiya, but I remembered the nausea that wouldn’t leave me when I learned of the Duma arson killing in 2015, and the recent violent rampages of Huwara in which a man was killed in the fires.

Coming face to face with devastation

What hit me the strongest, and what I am least likely to forget, is the smell; the sand-like nature of the soot, how it slides on the stone floors. Condemnations for the attack quickly rolled in - by the US, by Israeli government officials, and by Israel’s allies.

Then, on Saturday night, IDF Chief-of-Staff (Lt.-Col.) Herzi Halevi, Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) head Ronen Bar and Israel Police chief Kobi Shabtai said that “over the last few days, violent attacks have been carried out by Israeli citizens against innocents. These attacks stand contrary to any moral and Jewish value, and are national terror for all intents and purposes.”

Since the start of the calendar year, the UN recorded a 34% increase in settler violence, tallying up to 475 separate incidents. That this attack is horrible is not new, but what was made new to me by seeing it with my own eyes is how very far away from politics it all is. I checked my political opinions and my previous experiences at the door, the door of a home with walls so black I’d never seen anything like it.

Harrowing testimonies from Turmus Aiya residents

And so my eyes and ears were opened to the sheer tragedy of it all. An elderly woman told a group of reporters and some 20 diplomats, there under a solidarity delegation headed by EU Representative Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff on Friday, of how she was sitting on her porch with her seven-year-old grandson when two settler teens approached them. Each held something in his hand, though one she could clearly identify as a stick.

They punched her, beat her and kicked her, as she screamed. When they started beating the child, she said to them, ‘beat me, don’t touch the child.’ As of Friday, she still had bruises on her head, her back and her stomach, she said.

Eventually, a short window of opportunity was available to grab the child and go inside the house. Debating which room to go to, and in a split second, she settled on the bathroom.

This proved to be the smartest decision, as the house was soon set on fire. It got so hot, she kept patting down the boy’s face with water from the tap to keep him from overheating.

A man standing next to her as she told her story of horror, presumably her husband, looked like he was on the brink of tears hearing what he must have heard countless times already - the story of how he almost lost his family.

Intentional damage

A house further up the street suffered USD 250,000 worth of damages, the EU office said. Another woman, a resident of the town who works as a local school principal, said: “This wasn’t the first time, it was just the worst time.”

Speaking fast and heavily, Turmus Aiya's mayor Lafi Adeeb Shalabi told the delegation that it was an “intentional attack... to ensure that the people are terrified.” The way he and other residents of the town spoke, drew no distinction between the group of settlers that attacked their town, settlers in general, and the government; they see it all as one unit acting in coordination. A man originally from Turmus Aiya, who now lives in California and practices law, noted how houses that appeared empty - lights out, no electricity cables - were not targeted, that only the ones that could be clearly seen as occupied were.

Could it be that these stories only really reach wide-ranging ears when someone dies, or when the damage is so great, or when videos of it spread on social media faster than the army can put a statement out about it?

Because it truly is different when you step foot in there and realize that at the end of the day, what is left for the Palestinians in this town is a legacy of fiery hate, and that maybe that is the goal of terror. But the dialogue cannot end there.

An educational issue

In their joint announcement, Halevi, Bar and Shabtai called on the “settlement community leaders, public figures and educators to publicly denounce and condemn these acts and to join in fighting against them,” implying that the issue here is not simply of law and order, but is educational.

Gush Etzion Regional Council head Shlomo Ne'eman dismissed this charge quickly, saying that the attackers are a fringe group that takes the law into their own hands, that they do not represent the community at large, and that “settlement leaders do not have and should not need to get the tools to deal with these people, who are straying from the accepted, common path.

“We call on law enforcement agencies to bring them to justice, not roll the ball over to us and expect condemnations that are quite obvious, yet meaningless. The general settler public does not act above the law, and those that do should be punished accordingly by law enforcement.”

Confronting the dark reality

But as one resident put it, “they are not military but they are armed, and they are not being held accountable.”

After the deadly Eli attack, the two terrorists were caught and dead within two hours of the event taking place. As of the time of writing, the Shin Bet had arrested three extremist-right activists following what happened in Turmus Aiya.

It can be hard to divorce personal politics, history, national identity and community goals from a situation like what happened in Turmus Aiya. But there can and should be space to hold the tragedy of it all, to bear silent witness to what it means to the residents to have their peace so disturbed and their lives so threatened, and to staunchly condemn those who did it, especially as they come from my own camp; that two wrongs don’t make a right and that this should never be something our community stomachs.