On 15 November 2008, around 9:00 a.m., approximately fifteen masked Israeli settlers from the illegal outpost of Havat Ma'on attacked three Palestinian shepherds who were grazing their flocks in a valley south of the outpost.  The settlers came running down from a ridge above the shepherds, hurling rocks. The shepherds were able to get their flocks away before the rocks injured them.

During the incident, the settlers were able to steal two of the shepherds' donkeys.  The settlers killed one donkey with a knife wound in the chest area.  They slashed another across the throat, but the donkey survived.

At 9:10 a.m. on the morning of Wednesday 29 October 2008, the Israeli military demolished ten Palestinian dwellings in the South Hebron Hills village of Um al Kher, leaving around sixty people, including young children, homeless.
The military arrived without warning shortly after 9:00 a.m. Soldiers gave the villagers little time to remove their possessions before demolishing four stone homes and six metal dwellings with a bulldozer. Um al Kher is situated close to the Israeli settlement of Karmel and the demolished homes were those closest to the settlement.

On the morning of Saturday 18 October 2008, a group of four Israeli settlers beat up a Palestinian reporter, Abed Hashlamoun, in the Tel Rumeida area of Hebron. He required hospital treatment for his injuries.

Hashlamoun had been photographing Palestinians, Israelis, and internationals harvesting olives together in an event organized by Tel Rumeida landowners. Hashlamoun was walking alone through the olive groves when male settlers knocked him to the ground and began beating and kicking him.

Several of the olive pickers heard his cries and ran to help him. One of the settlers seized Hashlamoun’s camera. CPTer Janet Benvie approached the settler and asked him to return the camera, but he did not respond. When Benvie took hold of the camera strap the young man punched her in the face, knocking her to the ground. He then hurled the camera into the rocky field below.

Ten years ago this week, the Israeli military demolished ‘Atta and Rodeina Jaber's home for the first time.  "The rubble is still in my face, on the ground," ‘Atta told Christian Peacemaker Team members as he and his family harvested tomatoes in the hot, late-morning sun. "If I forget, the rubble reminds me. Every day."

On 19 August 1998, 140 Israeli soldiers and two large bulldozers arrived to destroy the home that ‘Atta and Rodeina Jaber had built six years before on land where Atta's family has lived for more than 100 years.

Their land in the Beqa'a Valley is in Area C, which is under full Israeli control. Palestinians are routinely denied building permits in Area C.

Neighbors, family members, Israelis and internationals immediately came together to rebuild a two-room house with donated and supplies. But on 16 September, the army demolished this house as well. When ‘Atta tried to hand his infant son to a soldier to take to safety, he was beaten and then arrested. He spent four days in jail and was unable to work for eight months due to his injuries.

Our CPT delegation met Michael, one of the former Israeli soldiers now active in the "Breaking the Silence" organization.  Originally American, he immigrated to Jerusalem in his early years.  For people like him, he said, the State of Israel was "a sort of miracle."  Joining the Israeli military was like joining a good college in America­the key to advancement and an enjoyable social life.  He did well in the military and quickly rose to the rank of Lieutenant General.

"Breaking the Silence" started in 2004 as an exhibition with photographs and stories from disillusioned military personnel who had served in Hebron.  Michael happened to see it in Tel Aviv and now works full time as one of Breaking the Silence's main representatives.  His military background helps in getting an audience, and he spends most of his time talking to young people before their military service.

The organization seeks to educate Israelis who "have no clue," according to Michael.  Most Israelis, he said, seem to be in a sort of self-induced slumber as to the realities of occupation.  They lazily believe that some form of equality and dignity is possible despite the occupation, a formula Michael passionately rejects.

Originally "Breaking the Silence" would take tourists to Hebron, but settlers attacked them and the police eventually kicked out.  Now they take three or four people if they go at all, because such low numbers do not officially constitute a "group."  

On 2 August, more than one hundred children and their parents from the South Hebron Hills marched from the village of At-Tuwani to the village of Tuba, calling for an end to settler violence and settlement expansion in the area. The march was a part of the annual South Hebron Hills summer camp for children and a response to recent settler attacks on children walking to the summer camp in At-Tuwani.

The children and their parents, accompanied by a few Israelis and internationals, took the most direct path to the village of Tuba. For the past eleven years, school children escorted by the Israeli military have been the only Palestinians able to use this road. Palestinian parents organized the march to call attention to the violence faced by school children, the failure of the Israeli army to protect them and the effects of Israeli settlement expansion.

At 1:50 pm, on Sunday, 27 July, Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian children between the ages of six and fifteen and Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT) members Joel Gulledge and Jan Benvie, who were accompanying them as they walked to their village of Tuba. The children had been attending summer camp in At-Tuwani.

As the fourteen children and two CPTers were walking in a valley south of the Havat Ma'on settlement outpost, one masked settler came down the hill, hurling stones with a slingshot. The children and Benvie ran ahead, but saw other stone-throwing settlers approaching them from the opposite side of the valley. None of the stones struck the children, however, and they were able to run to safety.  

When the masked settler saw Gulledge filming the attack, he began directing his stones at Gulledge. The settler hit him in the leg with a rock, inflicting an injury that made it impossible for Gulledge to run away. The settler then wrested the camera from him, and began beating him with a rock and the camera. After that, the settler ran off with the camera. Gulledge was treated for his injuries at a hospital in Hebron and then returned to At-Tuwani.

On Friday 25 July at 10:30 a.m., three Israeli settlers, one masked and accompanied by a dog, left the Havat Ma'on settlement outpost and followed a Palestinian shepherd and his young son into the village of At-Tuwani. Over to the next hour, the settlers remained in the village shouting insults at the residents of the village and threatening to shoot them.

Before I left for a CPT assignment in Hebron, a relative asked what I would be doing there. I told him I would probably be spending a lot of time at Islamic Charitable Society (ICS) orphanages the Israeli military was trying to close down. "Why are they trying to close them down?" he asked. "Because they are run by an Islamic charity," I said. "Oh," he said, nodding, as though the word "Islamic" were a sound reason for depriving several hundred children of a home.

As I looked for analogies that would explain the situation of the ICS, I thought of the Salvation Army.  I remember how much I loved hearing the sound my coins made at Christmas time when I dropped them in the red metal pot, and the smile the old man in the Salvation Army uniform gave me as he rang his bell beside it.  My husband, however, associates the Salvation Army with Oliver North, whom it invited to speak at fundraising events. As someone who cared passionately about the human rights abuses the governments of Central America were committing against their citizens during the 1980s, he was appalled that a Christian organization would provide North a platform, given that North's work with U.S. intelligence agencies supported criminals responsible for the deaths of thousands of Central Americans.

No one suggested shutting down the Salvation Army's ministries because of their connection to a man who lied before Congress about selling weapons to Iran to fund the Nicaraguan Contras. No one in the United States would suggest shutting down charitable institutions for the needy run by conservative Republican Christians simply because a conservative Republican administration initiated the catastrophic violence in Afghanistan and Iraq.