In September 2023, I travelled to Israel as Chair of New Israel Fund Australia. One day was spent in the West Bank with a Bedouin herding community near the illegal settlement in the north Jordan Valley of the West Bank, only days after they were attacked by these settlers.

I was one of three international volunteers on a Rabbis for Human Rights protective presence action, walking alongside Bedouin shepherds as they searched for grazing land under the relentless desert sun. About two hours into the day, Hebrew voices echoed across the valley. Six or seven settlers emerged, far more people than any flock required, spreading themselves along the ridge overlooking us. Our Rabbis for Human Rights coordinator quietly asked us to stand together and make ourselves visible. For the next three hours the settlers shadowed us, periodically moving closer in an attempt to intimidate the shepherd. Thankfully, the day ended without violence.

What I participated in was not exceptional. For more than two decades, Rabbis for Human Rights has organised Israeli volunteers to accompany Palestinian farmers during the olive harvest and Bedouin shepherds as they graze their flocks, providing a protective civilian presence in areas where settler violence is common. In the past year alone, more than a thousand volunteers have worked across more than thirty villages, at a time when the United Nations estimates there are, on average, more than four settler attacks each day.

I recount this experience not because Israel’s current government looks to support this work equality or human rights—it plainly does not—but because the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion has been tasked with recommending practical ways to strengthen trust between communities. Those models already exist. They are being built, imperfectly and often at great personal risk, by Israelis and Palestinians themselves. If people living through one of the world’s most entrenched conflicts can sustain them, Australia should be able to........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)