I recently spent a day in the Jordan Valley, after following the news about the increase of deadly violence in the West Bank for months. Those attacks, awfully, have become murderous and not only injurious. From what I understand, the violence is largely carried out with impunity by the Jewish hilltop and farming youth, who have stated proudly that their aim is to make life so hellish for the Palestinians who live in the area that they leave their land of their own will so that the land becomes “Jewish.”

The desire to make the West Bank and the Jordan Valley free of Arabs (reminiscent of the Nazis’ goal I learned as a child: Judenrein, free of Jews), pursued in violent, fearful ways, is impossible for me to square with anything I know to be Jewish.

In my visit to the area, I was taken aback by the many things I did not know, despite my attention to the news:

The extent of the poverty. The Palestinians on these farms, under attack, are terribly poor. They live in makeshift tents. They farm or they shepherd. It’s a subsistence life. They want their kids to go to school, but the conditions of living in an area under IDF control often make this impossible. One mother explained to me that five children are limited to one phone for learning over Zoom. When there is reception. What some of the shepherds in this area seek, and what these settlers want to deny them, is the freedom to bring their sheep across what is now a highway to graze on abundant green land that has been claimed by one Jewish clan.

Palestinians are chased away from the land designated for them by attacks of fire, gunfire, sadistic slaughter of animals,........

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