Join us this Wednesday, February 8th, on Tu B’shvat, to plant trees and to express solidarity with Al-Jenia ›

Pictures taken by B’Tselem fieldworker by Iyad Haddad  in Al – Janiya west of Ramallah, of the damage caused by settlers who destroyed a taxi and sprayed racist graffiti. Owners who saw the settlers fleeing said it was a group of 4-5 young people and they fled into the settlement of Talmon- visible in the background.

Join us this Wednesday, February 8th, on Tu B’shvat, to plant trees and to express solidarity with Al-Jenia

“Death to Arabs”

“Mohammad is a Swine”

“Closed Military Zone: Wait…”

Against the background of these words spray-painted on the side of a family’s house in the village of Al-Jenia, my own words of outrage felt clumsy and odd. This sort of attack by settlers on Palestinian property isn’t a new, of course, and its results were, thankfully, less extreme than the incidents wherein mosques were burnt down in “price tag” attacks.

And nonetheless, each time I see such things, my heart crawls into my throat, and I am haunted by the Stars of David which almost always accompany these words threatening murder.

See a short video of the aftermath of the attack in Al-Jenia

The most commonly cited mitzvah in the Torah—appearing 37 times—is the imperative to love the stranger. There is nothing that perverts this imperative more than death threats to Arabs and mockery of Islam.

Tomorrow is Tu B’shvat, the Jewish festival of trees. My organization, Rabbis for Human Rights, will be taking a delegation of Israeli and international Jews to Al-Jenia to plant trees with the villagers and to express solidarity against the hatred and oppression enacted upon them—both through this recent attack, and by the system of occupation in general.