Frontline
December  2000
Editors Choice

 Ms Neta Golan, Shalom!

In the midst of all the blood–letting and bitterness, thanks to Israel’s triggering of the latest conflict with Palestine, on November 18, The Times, London, published an extremely moving report under the heading, ‘Jewish woman risks bullets to help Palestinians’. We reproduce the report in full:

SAM KILEY

(The Times, London)

Hares, Nov 18: A Jewish woman has turned herself into a human shield to protect Palestinian olive pickers from Israeli soldiers and armed settlers.

For the past month, the 3,500 residents of Hares have watched their crop spoil on the bough. When they nip over the earthworks erected by Israeli army which has sealed them into their village to try to pick the fruit, Jewish settlers from the nearby West Bank of Ravava, shoot at them. And when Palestinians want to move the barriers which surround their village, Ms Neta Golan is there to stand between them and the Israelis daring them to shoot a Jew.

On Wednesday night at the end of a day in which she endured threats of rape, a settler sent her a message wrapped in a full metal jacket. The bullet from his M16 automatic rifle struck close enough to blast a piece of rock into her face. She had been shouting at them with a loudhailer and demanding that the group of 40–60 settler vehicles, which had gathered at the entrance to the village should leave.

The army stood aside as some of the settlers marched towards Hares carrying their guns. When they opened fire, Ms. Golan kept her nerve. "That is a crime and I will lodge a complaint with the military courts and you will go to an army jail", she yelled.

"That did the trick", she said. "They didn’t like the idea of the stockade, they got the settlers to go away. But as soon as I am gone, they’ll be back". Ms Golan’s sympathy with the Palestinians and the publicity she has generated about the military noose around Hares where at least 25 have been injured and one boy of 14 killed by the Israeli army has enraged authorities. The military said that Hares has been sealed off and olive groves close to the main road bulldozed because stone–throwers have been attacking cars, an accusation that is true.

Ms Golan, 27, a therapist specialising in Chinese medicine, and her friends are part of a small and growing number of Israeli "Lefties" who have been horrified by the Palestinian death toll since the start of the al Aqsa Intifada. Last week they came to the West Bank to help the villagers of Hares to harvest the olives which form the basis of their economy, specially as they have been banned from travelling to their jobs in Israel and elsewhere by the army.

"If we were not here, these people would not be able to go into their fields. If we leave, they’ll get shot at straight away", Ms Golan said.

Mr Harun Daoud, the Mayor of Hares, which is sandwiched between the town–size settlement of Ariel, home to 20,000 Jews who settled on the West Bank in violation of international law, and the religious hamlet of Ravava, said that the presence of Ms. Golan "has saved lives and brought us hope that the Israelis might be able to live with us one day".

Mr. Gadi Kind, the head of security in Ravava, whose heavily armed men stood scowling as Ms. Golan and her friends joined the Palestinians in picking olives in the field, said he would be happy to live in peace with his neighbours and denied that settlers had attacked anyone from Hares.

Rabbi David Mivasair, 48, who heads the Or Shalom congregation in Toronto, Canada, joined Ms. Golan in the olive groves, skipping a day’s Talmudic studies in what he said was a gesture of support for the Palestinians who have lived there for centuries.

 

 

 


[ Subscribe | Contact Us | Archives | Khoj | Aman ]
[ Letter to editor  ]
Copyrights © 2001, Sabrang Communications & Publishing Pvt. Ltd.