There’s Only One Way to Describe This Settler Attack: A Pogrom

Entering the home of the Mashani family in the small town of Al-Shuyukh, north of Hebron in the West Bank, is like paying a visit to a rehabilitation ward in a hospital. Almost every member of the family is hurt, some remain in bandages, a few are limping and all of them have wounds to show us – some of them quite serious.

Mohammed Mashani, 37, is barely able to move around, even with a walker; an opening has been made in his arm for an IV line because an infection that developed in his leg requires antibiotic treatment. He faces a lengthy rehabilitation process.

His 65-year-old father, Ayid, the head of the household, has 16 stitches on one side of his skull and five more on the other side, concealed beneath his red-and-white keffiyeh. The arm of Mohammed’s sister, Maryam, 27, is in a cast.

Mohammed, who has two daughters and a son, is a construction worker who’s employed in the Israeli Arab town of Kafr Qasem and sleeps on the sites of the buildings he’s working on. He only returns home to his family every 25 days. Such is the life of Palestinians working in Israel. It is the solidly built Mohammed, the most badly wounded in the pogrom, who, with his father, tells us what happened.

Early in the morning of Thursday, November 3, six members of the family set out for their olive grove, about 5 kilometers (some 3 miles) from their home – 40 dunams (10 acres) of land from which the stones have been carefully cleared, on which 400 trees are growing. The hour was approximately 6 A.M. In the Toyota pickup were Ayid, his second wife, Afaf, 60, his daughter Maryam, his sons Mohammed, Hamad, 33, and Omar, 30, and Mohammed’s 8-year-old son Tair. They arrived at the grove, spread blankets beneath the trees to catch the olives, and started to harvest the crop. At 8:30 they stopped to eat breakfast.

About 2 kilometers from the grove lies the settlement of Asfar, which was originally established as a military outpost in 1983 and then handed over to ultra-Orthodox settlers; in 1992 they expanded their presence, creating an illegal outpost on land abutting Asfar. Only 60 meters separate the edges of the settlers’ unlawful farm from the olive grove. The Mashani family has suffered harassment on a number of occasions at the hands of the settlers, but what happened that day a few weeks ago outdid all previous attacks.

A video shot by Hamad with his phone shows how it all began. Settlers, initially about 10 of them, are seen swooping down the hill toward the trees, masked, bent on malice, holding clubs and pipes which they seem to try to hide behind their backs. The raid is carried out with imperiousness – it’s impossible to be mistaken as to who thinks they are the true owners of the land, by virtue of their hooliganism and weapons. Might makes right. Kippahs on their heads and tzitziot (ritual fringes) making a statement of their own, the men stride purposefully and threateningly toward the Mashanis.

Then, there was a moment of quiet before the storm.

“Why are you making such a mess?” asked Avraham, the leader of the pogromists, whose name they know from previous incidents. The elder of the group, bespectacled, potbellied and sporting a large black kippa, he addressed Ayid in the tone of a Shin Bet security service interrogator.

“I am on my land – what mess?” Ayid replied, trying to head off a confrontation.

Put down the camera, Avraham ordered the photographer with a dismissive gesture. “Come on, come on, no cameras,” he barked, like a gang boss.

Ayid says this week that in his opinion, Avraham had wanted to force him onto the road and not clash with him on his own land, in the grove, to bolster the claim later he had not been trespassing and that it was the Mashanis who initiated the attack on the settler-elder.

“Come on, come on, go down there with me,” Avraham shouted at Ayid. “Go down there with me.” The patience of the hooligan Avraham, lord of the land, was threatening to run out. You wouldn’t want to meet this guy in a dark alley at night.

He turned to the family. “Why are you helping him make all the mess?” The “mess” was, of course, their harvesting of their olives on their land. “Why are you trying to disrupt things?” Avraham asked, standing there in the grove.

Ayid, who is solidly built and doesn’t look like someone who scares easily, is seen standing his ground. After a few more exchanges in Hebrew and Arabic, the lord and master could no longer contain himself. “Come with me to the road,” Avraham persisted, shoving Ayid. The three sons moved to protect their father and the phone dropped out of Hamad’s hand, the picture turning upside down and the screen going black.

The pogrom had begun.

In the meantime, an all-terrain vehicle arrived with three more settlers, armed with revolvers, one also carrying a rifle. “We weren’t frightened, we’re used to it,” Mohammed says now. According to him, Avraham attacked Ayid and the two fell to the ground. One of the settlers standing behind them struck Ayid on the head with an iron pipe as he lay there. Stones then started to fly from all directions at the family. Two settlers with two terrifying dogs joined in the festivities, one of them sicced a dog on Mohammed – he shows us the bite marks on his left thigh.

A settler grabbed a large iron rod from the Mashanis’ truck and used it to hit Mohammed’s right leg, shattering it. Mohammed lost consciousness at that point. Maryam, and Ayid’s wife Afaf tried to shield him from further harm, before a rock slammed into Maryam’s arm and broke it. A stone hit Hamad’s ear and perforated the eardrum, his brother Omar was punched in the eye. Ayid still sports a bruise caused by someone’s fist below his eye, in addition to his head wounds, which caused a concussion.

As Mohammed recounts the events of that day, he shows us one by one the relevant wounds and scars on his body; his right leg is bandaged and he can’t stand on it. He recalls feeling as if the leg was hanging in the air, dangling, detached.

At one point Avraham threatened, “You have three minutes to clear out of here, or we’ll keep going.” The Palestinians fled to the Toyota, with Omar and Hamad carrying Mohammed because he couldn’t walk. They then discovered that all this time Mohammed’s son Tair had been hiding under the pickup. The boy was so traumatized he didn’t utter a word for the next three days. This week, too, he was silent during our visit.

Sometime later, after fleeing the grove, the family discovered that the settlers had also sabotaged the tractor they had left behind. They tore cables, poured sand into the gas tank and sugar into the oil pan and slashed the tires. The tractor, now parked in front of their house after neighbors towed it there, is unusable. It’s doubtful that it’s worth repairing.

After driving a few hundred meters, the family stopped to stabilize Mohammed’s leg with two planks. Omar, who was driving the pickup, momentarily lost consciousness. A Palestinian ambulance that had been summoned to their house in Al-Shuyukh was already waiting, and rushed the wounded – Mohammed, Hamad, Omar and Ayid – to Alia Hospital in Hebron. Maryam and Afaf joined them immediately afterward.

Hamad underwent surgery on his ear, which was stitched up, Omar’s swollen eye was treated, Maryam’s arm was set in a cast, and Afaf underwent catheterization, as her heart seemed to be in danger from all the fear and stress. Mohammed was operated on and a platinum plate 45 centimeters (17.7 inches) long was inserted in his leg; after five days he was transferred to the Specialized Surgery Hospital of the Arab Society for Rehabilitation in Beit Jala, adjacent to Bethlehem. He’s had to pay about 8,000 shekels out of pocket for his treatment there so far.

Ayid was discharged from Alia Hospital the next day, his head stitched up. Three days after the incident, the family filed a complaint at the Etzion police station. Master Sgt. Nadav Nissim, who took the complaint, promised to update them.

Most of the olives remained on the trees in the family grove until this past Tuesday when, in coordination with the army, the family was able to go about harvesting their crop.