The Italian weekly L’Espresso titled its latest edition “L’Abuso” or “The Abuse,” illustrating the cover with a photo of an armed Israeli settler sneering at a Palestinian woman with a frightened expression and filming her with his cell phone camera. The photographer, Pietro Masturzo, said the photo captured the first day of the olive harvest season in Hebron in the West Bank. Thousands of Palestinians were prevented from accessing their land due to intensified settler violence. On the day this photo was taken, 20 settlers were accompanied by 30 IDF soldiers. The settler pictured here told Palestinians that they would be arrested if they continued to try to reclaim their property and would be sent to Al-Moskobial, the notorious Israeli prison.
The striking image quickly went viral, and Jonathan Peled, Israeli ambassador to Rome, condemned the cover, saying it “distorts the reality of a complex situation” and “reinforces stereotypes and hatred.” Some Israeli apologists even likened the photo to Nazi propaganda and claimed it promoted anti-Semitism. In truth, I think the photo exposes the reality of the daily brutality of the settler colonialist, Greater Israel Project.
The photo reminded me of my first visit to the Occupied Territories in the early 1980s, and of watching newly arrived American Jews from Brooklyn and New Jersey arrive in Hebron. At that point, they weren’t carrying government-issued guns, but they were already smugly strutting down the center of walkways, challenging Palestinians to move aside. My recollection is that they’d not yet devolved into the genocidal psychopath pictured above.
The photo also brought to mind my visit to a Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon, also in the early 1980s. I’ve never forgotten the elderly woman who retrieved a crumpled black-and-white photo from her tent. It depicted her family’s olive trees, and as I looked at it, she expressed the hope that her grandchildren or great-grandchildren might one day return to reclaim them. I left her with tears in my eyes.
For now, look at the settler’s face. For me, it epitomizes Zionism and, unfortunately, contributes to anti-Semitism because many people no longer differentiate between Israel and all Jewish people. I must be honest and confess that I hate Israel, will never forget or forgive, and am gladdened by the fact that a majority of Americans now have an understanding of Palestinian reality and thus have a negative view of the Zionist entity. Finally, I must guard against letting those feelings consume my humanity.