Shouting to the heavens
And here’s a report from Machsom Watch activist Daphne Banai: “Ali Odeh was like a bomb of rage. He stood next to his house in Ras al-Ahmar (in the northern Jordan Valley) and cried out bitterly, his hands waving in all directions, his face red, his eyes popping out of their sockets. We cringed. The feeling was that if he had had explosives with him he would have blown us all up. The whole valley could hear him screaming.
“We never saw such rage before. We gradually began to understand from his shouts what the story was. Three weeks ago, toward dawn, bulldozers arrived (with soldiers) and ran over all his property – the house, the pen, the granary, even the toilet, destroying everything. For days he and his nine children slept under the stars. During the day they would collect the remains of their belongings from the rubble.
“Humanitarian organizations donated a tent after a week, and Ali invested what was left of his savings in tarpaulins to shelter the flock, especially the newborn lamb. Many of the sheep remained unsheltered from the terrible sun and the cold at night.
“Then at 5 A.M. on Monday, while he and his children slept, the army came again with its jeeps and armed soldiers. This time they confiscated the tractor.
“‘Entry into a firing zone,’ it said on the wrinkled piece of paper he held in his hands shaking uncontrollably. ‘Entry? What entry?’ he shouted. ‘We were asleep! The tractor was asleep too! I live here, I was born here, my father was born here, my grandfather was born here! This is my home. I’m a nail driven deep into the earth!’ he shouted.
“‘Why the tractor now? It’s my hands and feet! I have no water. Israel doesn’t let me draw water from the ground. How will I get water for my children now? For my sheep? Should they just die? ‘How will I bring them feed? A farmer without a tractor can’t live!’
“If all that wasn’t bad enough, because of a drill, on Tuesday the army threw Ali and his children out of their rebuilt home. I asked the 12-year-old boy were he slept. ‘In the valley, there under the stars,’ he said, pointing.
“Now he has no ‘hands and feet.’ The army will keep them for 40 days, when Ali and his four neighbors whose tractor was also seized will have to pay a fine in the thousands of shekels and a storage fee in order to get their machine back. But nobody can guarantee them that it won’t be confiscated again a week later.
“It’s here of all places, in this densely populated area of Ras al-Ahmar, that the army seeks to play its war games, because as an army officer said at the session [of a subcommittee of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee], no grass grows where soldiers tread. The aim is to make life difficult in order to rid the Jordan Valley of Ali and all his neighbors.”
A crime against humanity
So, briefly, on October 9, the Civil Administration, backed by soldiers, destroyed 10 residential buildings and 17 animal sheds and coops belonging to nine families. On November 1, the residents of Ras al-Ahmar were expelled from the place so the army could train. Earlier this year, in January and May, they were moved for a few days each time, again for the same reason. Last year the army kicked them out eight times so it could drill.
Yes, mother of a soldier: It’s natural to be ashamed that your son aids in the seizure of a tractor from a farming family and the imposing of fees for its return that cost as much as a year’s food. And all this in order to expel them.
Yes, you should explain to your moral children that expelling the people of an occupied land is a war crime and a crime against humanity. And it’s an obligation to teach them to refuse to be complicit in a crime, and to support them in their refusal to be criminals.
