Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
The Thin Veil is a show for anyone looking to deepen their understanding of Palestine—and what Palestine can reveal about the systems shaping our world. Hosted by musician/activist and anti-Zionist Jew Ezra Lipp, who was raised in a Zionist ecosystem and is now, as always, on a continuing journey of learning and unlearning.
Through long-form conversations with historians, journalists, artists, activists, and people with lived experience, the show explores Palestine not in isolation, but as a window into questions of power, history, identity, media, ideology, resistance, and the stories we inherit about the world around us.
Coming up on The Thin Veil
the world gets so much bigger when you're not afraid.
in a deeply ironic way, I've seen so much more of Palestine than any Zionist I've been to Ramallah, I've been to Yatta, I've been,
all over the West Bank to places that I was constantly told that I couldn't go to. And when you just go in a way that actually respects people's dignity and show that, I'm with you, all of a sudden it's way easier. And to me, it's, just so important in terms of having grown up unequivocally being told that these people wanna hurt me and that these people wanna kill me, and just see, like,
you know, that thing you said is impossible, that, there's no way to just sort of live in actual equal harmony together? You know, I, I did it
Well, hello, and welcome back to The Thin Veil. I am your host, Ezra Lipp. The Thin Veil is a show attempting to lift the veil on understanding around Palestine, exploring what happens when inherited narratives start to crumble,
this show is based in my own experience, as a middle-aged professional musician a secular Jew who grew up in a very, Zionist-intensive educational ecosystem.but only much later in life, after October 7th, did I start to peel back the layers and really start to study, the history of Palestine and Zionism,
if you are a recurring listener, thank you for coming back. If you're a new listener to The Thin Veil, thank you for being here. We would love your support of the show. We have a Patreon page. You can become a monthly supporter. We have a Ko-fi page if you'd like to leave a donation.
The show is a labor of love. It takes an incredible amount of work every week to get you these amazing conversations, so your support is very much appreciated. Also, of course, leave a rating and review wherever you're listening to this, whatever podcast platform. Like, subscribe, hit the notification bell on YouTube, all the normal stuff, but I say it every week because not everyone does it, and it's really important.
So I would love it if you could participate and support the show in that way. Help get these conversations out to more people.
My guest today is somebody who, also has had inherited narratives crumble probably even more so than myself. he grew up in a very, uh, religious Orthodox community in the US,
eventually would go to study at a mechina in Israel, which is basically a, a religious military prep academy. and then through the course of many years of discovery, and pulling the layers back, actually, came to understand Zionism and the myths he was raised with for what they were. and we talk about his transformation in that way, and then also, more significantly, he ended up becoming somebody who would dedicate, the last several years of his life and, and will be continuing onward doing protective presence work in the West Bank, which is the act of going as an international, spending a lot of time or living as he did in Palestinian communities.
My guest most recently went through a program, through the Jewish Center for Nonviolence, and then later just on his own, accords without organizational facilitation. he lived in the area of Masafer Yatta, which is under massive threats of settler violence, state violence, which we will start to understand as he articulates in this episode as one of the same mechanism, and has been the subject of much violence, ethnic cleansing, and terror campaigns.
you're interested in participating in this work, there is lots of opportunity to get involved, whether through the International Solidarity Movement, Jewish Center for Nonviolence, or other organizations.
My guest today, of course, is none other than Sam Avraham Stein. Sam, in addition to doing this work, is documenting this work in real time on his Instagram page, which I will leave a link to. He has his own Patreon page, which he would be very appreciative if you would support his ability to go and continue, go back to Palestine, do these protective presence work.
So without further ado, please enjoy my conversation with the one and only Sam Avraham Stein
when you were 18 you decided to go to a mechina, a Israel mil- military prep academy, in Efrat, a, a West Bank settlement.
So you must have felt a strong affinity to Israel already, in choosing to do that. Can you describe some of the narratives you heard around Israel and Zionism growing up?
Yeah, definitely. there was just one narrative that really the community was in total lockstep about it. You know, Hashem, God gave us Eretz Yisrael. It's the holy land. It belongs to us, the Jewish people, and these Arabs only want to kill us because we have this land, and we've never done anything wrong in our lives.
there is no occupation. th- that's kind of the beginning and end of it. I would say that I really, wasn't paying attention in school growing up, and that had a funny way of it all just washes over me.
so because of that, especially again, when you're not paying attention like me, you're just hearing all this stuff going on in the background and it washes over you. If there's any diving into sort of the actual real politics on the ground of it all, then you might miss it like I did, and you totally conflate sort of Eretz Yisrael, the land of Israel, with the modern state of Israel, and to the point that it doesn't feel political.
you know, I knew that before 1948 there was w- wasn't like really a state of Israel. Now there is a state of Israel. Again, I have depending on my age, some working understanding of what that meant. But would honestly say that in terms of my decision to go to this Mechina program, it really didn't feel political.
It didn't feel like gung ho or, or Zionist even. it just felt like everyone around me went on a gap year in Israel after high school. It was totally the norm.
And I didn't really know where I was gonna go.
in terms of the location, I would say I you know, unequivocally had zero idea what that entailed. I was like, "Oh, okay, it's in the Gush. I, I vaguely know where the Gush is. A settlement, what's that?" You know, the first time I remember hearing the phrase the Green Line was after signing up for this program, and a girl my age going, "Ooh, past the Green Line, such a good Zionist."
And she said it in that way that like obviously it's a good thing. which again shows that like people my age and in my upbringing had a tiny bit more of an understanding of what's going on than I did, not that they had a deep understanding at all.
just to clarify for a minute, I'm sure most people listening to this know what the green line is, but if not, th- that refers to the 1948 borders of Israel, not the, '67 occupied, West Bank. So the implication was sh- you were being a good Zionist by doing the work in the occupied West Bank of Palestine.
Yeah, exactly. so that was the lack of relationship I had with the physical location. I would say even the army stuff, I was kind of like, " Oh, that's cool." it wasn't like a huge deal. The Krav Maga classes were exciting because I like combat sports and martial arts, and everything else was kind of like, "Yeah, let's try this out.
Why not?" So I think that was very indicative of my relationship with sort of the Zionism I grew up on, where I was just sort of along for the ride, and also speaks to how normalized it was in the community and sort of this depoliticizing of the political. Just like this is obviously a good, broader thing to do that's not connected to politics.
Just like you're a good, frum Orthodox Zionist Jew, you should do this army program in a settlement
in a lot of ways it was just like a fun, regular experience. It was just 18 being dumb with,the other guys in the program. I definitely saw, definitely started to feel cracks in all of the, the propaganda while I was on that program.
Two things that really always stick out to me is just seeing that Palestinians and Israelis in the West Bank had different license plates. Palestinians have, white and green license plates, and Israeli cars or international, if an international rents a car, I guess then too,yellow and black license plates.
And especially ironically, without the knowledge that I have now that like, oh, this is a different place and these people do not live in Israel, and they don't have Israeli citizenship, that ironically made it more confusing, where it just, screamed segregation to me. Like being American and growing up with education around the civil rights movement, I remember seeing these different license plates and not being able to think of anything other than whites-only water fountains.
were feeling that while you were there
Yeah, definitely. It definitely made me uncomfortable. I think that kind of the other prevailing experience was just shoving it out of my mind. I would not say at all that I actually grappled with this discomfort during my time, but it was something that I couldn't really justify when you're so primed to just justify every single thing that Israel is doing
And the other example that always pops into my head is just the checkpoint between the West Bank and Israel or, what a lot of anti-Zionists and Palestinians call the '48 territories. and not even the checkpoint, just the fact that it only checked in one direction.
It only checks when you're leaving the West Bank, which again, maybe ironically, not having any political language or education or knowledge around this stuff made it weirder and more confusing, where, it was just "Wait, why?" Because it's clearly not just, oh, security, because it's only in one direction.
And now I have, the awareness of, oh, it's because it's this quasi border where they don't care about Israelis going into the West Bank and want them to go-- be able to go home to their settlements or whatever, but they deeply care about Palestinians entering Israel. so those are the two things that really, that I couldn't shake, that made me uncomfortable, that like I said, I unfortunately did not grapple with.
All right. So you got back to the States after that program, I know you had an event where you, I believe were at, a college. I don't know if it was your college, but you heard a Palestinian speak, and I think you would maybe describe that as the first kind of big crack in the veil.
do you wanna talk about that experience?
Yeah, definitely. so I, like you said, I finished my year. I even thought of joining the army a tiny bit, of joining the Israeli army. My program director really wanted me to, my dad really wanted me to. thank God I didn't.
And we'll say very quickly that at this time I start becoming more in touch with my, like, literally liberal values in general, lowercase L, you know, not sort of politically neoliberal, just actually expansive and accepting. And Trump round one really started to radicalize me during the Republican primary, so that's, you know, important backdrop of all thisI think that I just sort of always had these progressive values, and I would never use that word, but I was always just a naturally,
liberal person that didn't have the language to express my views.
You know, I, I, I think this is like almost a trope that every leftist says is, you know, learning about segregation as a kid and thinking, "Oh, I would've opposed it." and I remember in high school supporting gay marriage from,
like,
a very young age when, you know, that was still forget in the Five Towns in my far-right religious community where that conversation was, you know, this is 2011, 2012. The, the secular American populace hadn't decided yet.
one of my rabbis, you know, ranted about how eventually after gay marriage, it's gonna become a whole conversation about whether or not you can marry pets and objects. So that's the
God
highbrow discourse that I was exposed to.
But the specific event that you're mentioning was I think probably January 2017, February 2017, something like that.
Ironically, the Hillel at my college, at Hunter College, brought in a Palestinian guy to come speak to us. He was, a college student. He was at, I think, Ithaca College.
And I remember he introduced himself and said that he lives in Bethlehem. And Efrat, the settlement that I lived in, is right next to Bethlehem/is stealing land from Bethlehem. And ironically, at this point, I definitely am developing a tiny bit more, of an understanding...
starting to come to the conclusion that, okay, the, the narrative I grew up on is, if not outright wrong and false, just deeply flawed, I don't know where I stand yet, but I need to figure this stuff out. So that's kind of where I'm at going into this moment, and I know that, like- Oh, I lived in a settlement and that's kind of bad, but I don't really know why it's bad.
And this guy mentions that he grew up in Bethlehem, and I remember thinking very naively, "Oh, we were neighbors." sort
of
totally unaware of the massive difference in privilege that either of us enjoyed, and the massive difference in human rights and dignity that we both enjoyed, and the humongous wall in between those two places.
And thank God I didn't say that. And he tells his story. I really don't remember what, the thesis of his presentation was about. I don't even remember his name. It's actually fascinating that I remember basically nothing about this man, other than the fact that he went to Ithaca College and is from Bethlehem, and he changed my life.
And at some point he mentioned, needing to get a permit to cross the checkpoint and go to the embassy in Jerusalem to apply for a visa to go to Jordan to fly to the US for college, because West Bank Palestinians aren't allowed to fly out of Ben Gurion.
And I remember thinking, "Wait, what?" "I- you had to what?" I just hopped on a plane and walked around like I owned the place.
so it was really confronted in the massive difference in our privilege, and remember just thinking, "Oh, that's apartheid," at a time when that word, was in the public discourse more up for debate than it is now. Obviously, it was never up for debate. That's always been just the accurate description of the reality.
I think after that it became impossible to kind of not start to see everything and to not just slowly and slowly get more disillusioned and more radicalized.
in college I,
embarrassingly enough and regrettably enough staffed Birthright twice. I was like a trip leader on Birthright, and, the, the ironic thing is that really felt like a liberal thing to do for me at the time coming from my upbringing.
during this process and starting to kind of unlearn the blatantly fascistic Zionism that I was raised on, and becoming, I don't know, lulled into a certain apolitical, liberal Zionism,
where
I thought that I could just be like, "Oh, I, know that there's bad stuff happening here politically.
I don't really know all the details, and I can just, like, not think about that," and be like, "But I love spending time in Israel. It's the Holy Land." and, thought I could separate those two things. so that's, you know, twice in college where I'm going back for free and having fun and whatever, and just keep going back even while my politics are shifting.
And then right after I graduated college, I went and stayed with cousins in Jerusalem for what ended up being, like, three months. By then I would say I, had come a long way politically and really went into it with the intentionality of,
wanting to explore more and
deepen
my understanding politically, and relearn and unlearn things.
You know, something that really colored that trip was just taking random trips into the West Bank and East Jerusalem in, non-settler context. So in East Jerusalem, that was just walking, just going there, walking around. and with the West Bank, I went on this tour with Abraham Hostel, where they brought us to Ramallah,
Bethlehem,
and Jericho, and I remember going to Bethlehem and thinking, "Oh, I wonder how many people have been on both sides of this wall."
and then after that I started applying for grad school,
I decided to go to Tel Aviv University, and then, at that point was very articulately
articulately
expressing and saying, not just to myself, but saying out loud to friends, "I need to be involved in real anti-occupation activism and real solidarity activism once I go, or I'm just complicit.
You know, I can't just smoke weed on the beach and be like, 'No, I'm against this.'"
how did you get from kind of birthright peacenik liberal Zion- ism, light to like, "I need to do protective presence
if there's any one, big moment beyond just that conversation with that guy from Bethlehem, I remember in 2018, when I was with my cousins in Jerusalem,
that
war with Gaza was going on, and the Great March of Return of Palestinians in Gaza, marching to the, border fence, the, the prison gates, whatever you wanna call it.
and of course, you know, to think, oh, just every single time you stop and think back, there's a war in Gaza, you know? It's almost like it's a machine doing what it's designed to do. But I remember that war happening and the March of Return happening, and hearing about people getting shot at the fence, and also besides being a lit- more tuned into just,
that human travesty and tragedy and that human loss happening, I remember seeing more and more of the people I grew up with kind of spewing the Hasbara, being like, "Oh, they're burning tires, it's bad for the environment, and we..."
And I'm just like, "Do you hear yourself?" Like, something
shifted in between point A and point B where I'm just like, "
This is
so deeply unserious. This they're burning tires and therefore... Wow
It was, it was a narrative. You know, I definitely don't wanna pretend
that
that's like, that is a real argument that I was exposed to.
Nobody says, "Oh, well they're burning tires so we can snipe and kill them." But you're just saying, "Oh, look at these Palestinians, they're burning tires and that's dangerous and bad for the environment and this and that," and it's part of the dehumanization, which leads to the logical conclusion that it's acceptable or fine or, God forbid, good that Israeli soldiers are shooting people and killing people
It's not even about getting people to actively support the killing of them.
it's pushing this constant narrative that you shouldn't side with these people. And then once it's happening, you can justify it in any logical political way.
It's just you've positioned yourself against these people, and you've put effort into positioning everyone else against these people so that all the mechanisms of brain going towards not fighting back against this
we should talk about the work you've been doing with Protective Presence.
When I got to Tel Aviv and,
I kind of just reached out to every group I could find. Eventually, one that really stuck was a group called All That's Left, which is, a group of, international Jews living in Palestine/Israel and engaging in different forms of activism and solidarity work.
And part of that was protective presence, and I think ironically, the first few times that I did protective presence, I wouldn't have used those words. I was just like, "Oh, these cool activists I had met have told me about this trip to, this Palestinian village. I'm gonna go." And eventually,
keep doing that, eventually drop out of grad school and move to Jerusalem just to be closer to that activist community, and to the West Bank, and just more in the thick of things.
And then start to go into the West Bank a lot, and start actually thinking of it in terms of protective presence. We're getting... It's, deep-stage COVID right now. That's a really important context, is we're getting calls from activists, Palestinian activists in Masafer Yatta, basically, that are saying like, "Hey, we don't have enough activists around anymore.
All the internationals are gone. We need people around a lot." just asking us to come for nights when they're worried about demolition threats in the morning, or where they're worried about attacks, or arrests, or raids. And there's a point where I'm, like, basically commuting from Masafer Yatta to Jerusalem.
You know, I'm just, like, getting a call, hopping in a car, spending the night in Atwani or Susya or al-Khair, waking up, driving home, showering, getting a different call, and driving back there And eventually I did a program called Hinenu with the Center for Jewish
Nonviolence.
That was spring 2021, so also really colored by COVID,
We were the first cohort. It's,
three months of full-time intensive protective presence in Masafer Yatta, so cohorts just live in different villages in the region for three full months, and that was really a life-changing experience. I made amazing relationships and friendships with, first and foremost, Palestinian hosts, and definitely also with other activists, and sort of,
with the movement in general.
I think that was really the point where I was like, "Oh, this is your life now." I was attacked by settlers at the very end of that in May 2021
during,
a big flare-up between Israel and Gaza, that has now fallen into the black hole of history that was really
characterized
characterized by rampant settler violence in the West Bank,
And I was attacked, and I was arrested because that's how it goes in the West Bank. If you're an activist or a Palestinian and you get attacked, you will be arrested. and for, kind of the next few years or this longer more consistent blur of I'm just living in Jerusalem doing God knows what to make money during the day, and just
doing
as much protective presence as possible.
And
then in
in
August
2024,
2024, I got a job with an organization called Rabbis for Human Rights as their field coordinator in Masafer Yatta to just organize protective presence and bring activists into the region. And I'm moving out of my apartment lease in Rechavia in Jerusalem is ending at this time, and I, like, don't really know where I'm gonna move, and, like, don't wanna find a place.
And I talked to some of the guys in Um Al-Khair, one of sort of the most prominent villages in Masafer Yatta that has a really rich connection with the activist community. I was like, "Hey, what if I just live here? It's my job to be here now." "Would that be helpful? Would you guys want that?"
And they were like, "Yeah, absolutely."
and just for what ended up being six months, just lived full-time in Um Al-Khair, driving back and forth to bring activists in and to go to the olive harvest, and whatever.
And that was, really... Life-changing doesn't even scratch the surface of just how much that changed my relationship with the occupation, and my understanding of how Palestinians live their daily lives and navigate space, and my relationship with Palestinians and with the people that I was staying with, and, the rest of the people in Masafer
it was something that was very powerful to me, and just living there with a car and trying to help out in whatever way that I could. For the first time in my life, there were days where I,
weeks on end where I'm not crossing the green line, where I'm just in the West Bank all the time, where I'm speaking more Arabic than Hebrew. at some point during my stay in Um Al-Khair my friend's mom called me Sam Hathaleen, Hathaleen being sort of like the tribal last name of the village.
and it kind of started as a joke, but was just
really touching and meaningful to me. and I bonded with the kids
And, Just when I'm in Um Al-Khair, it's like I'm with family, you--
and
that
has,
completely colored my experience doing protective presence
where half the time I show up, I'm not thinking, "Oh, I'm doing predictive presence." I'm just like, "I'm going to Um Al-Khair. I'm going to see the people that I love and care about."
you mentioned,
Awdah Hatheleen , who was a friend of yours, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah,
Auza?
yeah, Ouna really was who I thought of as my host when I was living in Um Walf, even though I guess the entire community was. I,
I remember the first time that I ever went to Amal Fair was just, with this tour organized by All That's Left, and I heard him speak and was just so impressed by, A, by his speaking skills in general, which, if you've ever heard anyone talk about Ara, you'll talk about what an amazing speaker he was.
But
B,
just how patient he was, The inherent patience in what he was doing of, like, baring his soul and his lived experience to all these people who were, like, all all over the spectrum of Zionism at this point, probably. all these people, these American Jews who just, like, wherever they were or weren't on the political spectrum, are all people that em- embodied the fact that they could just show up and have more freedom
than
he did in the place that he was born in.
everything that I've said about these relationships that I've made and these borders that I've crossed and the way that I've been able to sort of
live
things that a younger me could never imagine
Auda
embodied with every...
Awdah was the anchor of all of that
he felt like my bridge,
to the community
when I decided to move to Amal Fair, Otto was the one who was like, "This is the best idea ever. Absolutely do this, and we need to tell everyone about it, and, like, show that there's this Jewish guy living in our community,with us, helping us, and standing in solidarity with us."
years ago I fundraised for a wrestling mat and brought it into Malcayo and like coached the kids like once a week for I think about a year and just had like wrestling practice with the kids, hopefully that they can, have some sort of extracurricular and burn some energy.
And Otto like loved it. Otto
like,
You need to be coming every single week, and you be doing this like on a schedule of this many hours, and we're gonna,
try and get matches with other Palestinians."
And none of that ever happened, unfortunately. But it's sort of that passion that Otto brought to everything really made me know that I could just keep going and keep pushing bound- boundaries
And you there when he was killed? What, what happened?
I,for better or for worse, was not there,
a-a-and
and that, that's its own thing that, you know,
For everyone, it's luck of the draw whether or not you were there, but I left in April, and then he was killed in July, so it really was something that I was immediately confronted with.
It felt like I, should have been there, in quotes. It felt against the odds that I wasn't there. but,
what happened was, a settler named Dino Levy
He showed up to Mulkir one day. He lives in a different outpost in the southern part of Masafer Yatta.
with
his construction equipment, he owns an illegal sh- construction company that predominantly helps settlers and settlements expand, and
I don't remember if he was contracted by c- the Carmel settlement right next to Mulkir or if
this was on his own or what, but he was, like, helping, trying to help the settlement expand and trying to, do
c- some construction for the settlement and also uprooting olive trees belonging to Mulkir very close to Carmel's fence, And, this escalated or whatever and caused a huge, commotion, which,
feels like an insane word to use, but I can't really think of another one.
and,
some of the guys were throwing rocks at this, tractor or bulldozer or whatever that was uprooting the olive trees. And of course,
none of the settlers were at,
like,
any
immediate
threat from these rocks being thrown at,
like, a giant bulldozer. But, that's something that they all mentioned to justify this in hindsight.
and a guy from the village named Ahmed was actually hit in the head by the,
pylon or whatever of the bulldozer, was hit in the temple. I think he went to the hospital, and thankfully he's, made a complete recovery and he's okay. And at some point, Yonatan Levy started waving his gun around and fired and sh-hit Auda, shot and killed Auda from about 30 feet away.
He hit him in the lungs, and he bled out at that spot. He was,
blocked from entering the settlement to get any medical care, and ambulance was blocked from bringing him out, and he was eventually taken away from the ambulance, but declared dead
that day.
And, his body was held for a week or 10 days before it was given back to the family for them to be able to actually bury him and mourn.
And I just remember waking up and seeing, a text from Auda of, a, a warning,
of,
a call to action and a call for activists, and,
a, a text that he sent out to, not... Sent out to hundreds of people about the fact that Yonatan
Levy was there and the fact that this was all happening, and how dire the situation in Al-Khir was, and that we need more activists.
And then next thing I heard was somebody was shot, and I remember thinking,
"
It can't
possibly be Auda." and then I found out that it was Auda, and then I found out that he was gone
I'm so sorry
I would love for you to describe what are the mechanisms that the settler terrorists and the army, the state are doing? how much of it is the state, how much of it is rogue settlers, and how they work in conjunction. Maybe rogue settlers isn't even an accurate term. Maybe they're one and the same
Yeah.
the occupation is a multifaceted machine that is committing a lots of different forms of violence, but especially doing protective presence specifically. The main one that we're dealing with is settler violence and harassment, and to the extent that's backed up by the army.
And, part of the mechanism of sort of the theory of change of protective presence is just that it's a numbers game. Palestinians are doing this work, too, of just being in communities to offer sort of reinforcement and support when there's any concern of settler violence. And the other huge aspect of it is, unfortunately, and it sounds insane every time you say it, but it's just the, the privilege aspect of we have kind of
rights
and privileges that the Palestinian people in the West Bank do not.
And, if we're around, violence is less likely because there might actually be consequences for it, and if there is still violence, which unfortunately there often still is, we are more positioned to
raise
international awareness and to pressure American politicians to actually speak out against it, and to, push the Israeli state system for whatever tiny shred of accountability we might be able to.
there are activists that aren't in the field that the second a Palestinian is kidnapped
by
the army, they just mobilize their own group chats and have people call the army over and over again demanding to know where this Palestinian was taken, and to be able to get the lawyer to find out where this Palestinian is, and to actually get in touch with them, and to,
fight on that end of things.
So there's a lot of different mechanisms at play, and this kind of all, comes from the activists that are on the ground.
what are some of the tactics that these people are coming into a village and do- and doing what? I've seen videos of sh-sheep's eyes being gouged out, cars being set on fire. you've stood in homes that have been burnedif you could just maybe offer a little more witness to, the, the broader experience that Palestinians are facing
there's sort of the horrible stuff that makes headlines there'ssheep being killed and wells being poisoned and people being killed and homes being burned. and that stuff happens, often, I would say. And it's not that, the day-to-day usually doesn't have that.
The day-to-day just has the constant threat of all of that, and in some ways that's worse. that's what backs up both settler harassment and violence that isn't some horrific pogrom. It's just a dude with a gun who's hurt you before grazing his sheep outside your house and walking around, your backyard near your village and encroaching on your sort of personal space and freedom and area of freedom and autonomy.
And you know that all that stuff could happen 'cause it's happened before.
It's like constant
And
and being on high alert
Exactly. I call it,the low heat harassment. there's, the high heat of those pogroms and arson attacks and shootings and raids, but there's just the constant low heat that
backs
all up. And, in terms of a day in the life,
you try and get to work and hope that there's not a checkpoint.
this happened to me for the first time, on this recent visit, that I needed to leave Umm al-Fahm to go to a different village, and there's this gate that's been put up, a year and a half ago already. When I was living there, this gate was put up, and now there's an extra gate, so now there's two gates, which is totally excessive, but whatever.
and for the first time that I was exposed to it, the gate was actually closed, and these gates are almost worse than checkpoints. You know, there's a, a soldier manning a checkpoint. You might get grilled a little. You might get searched. You might get harassed. You will hopefully get through. Whereas, like, if this gate's closed, it just means there's no traffic in and out of that.
No cars go in and out of, in and out of that location, in and out of that little
little
they're literally entrapping people in their own
Yeah. Yeah, you can walk out, and then you're on the main highway. if you don't have somebody to pick you up or a cab or something, like once you walk past this gate in either direction, then you're screwed anyway. it's a ghetto. it, there, there's no other word to use, and the residents of Umm al-Fahm have called their experience the Gaza-fication of Umm al-Fahm.
And for the first time, again, for me, I had to walk past this gate, to get picked up to get driven to another village. And then the village that I was in, has an outpost nearby, and settler kids are just driving past on their ATV all the time.
And,that's part of the harassment. I spent another time in a village called Ka'l
Dilhumus that is right by a new outpost that's on the edge of Area B,also really emblematic of the expansion that's happening and the increased encroachment that's happening in Palestinian spaces.
This outpost keeps cutting their power line. Settlers from this outpost keep cutting their power line. And stealing parts of the wire even so that they can't fix it. So there's just no power, and people bring power banks and whatever. When I was in the village that night, we were using power banks to make sure our phones and everything stayed charged.
The family's living out of a cooler. they have an ice cooler to keep things cold because they don't have a fridge effectively. The mom told me, "Life is built off of running water and electricity, and we don't have those things." And, in terms of, how much of that is the state, how much of that is settlers,
the,
the front-facing actor is different every time.
there's those gates I mentioned, that's the soldiers, There's those, there's checkpoints, those are the soldiers. There might be a raid or arrest or a closed military zone or something that completely hampers, Palestinian freedom of movement, and that's the soldiers.
Then there's these attacks, this arson attack that happened in the village of Tuba that I documented where a, a few homes were set on fire. One was totally burned. those are done by settlers. But then the next day, settlers or soldiers are on the top of the hill looking over onto the village. that night, not a single settler was arrested.
I was just in Masafryat on the West Bank for, two or three weeks, anda huge list of incidents happened in that short time, but one that was just as I was getting back, I got in on Thursday, and then Saturday night this happened. settlers came to Um Al-Khair from a nearby outpost, a few, you know, hilltop youth, settler kids of, like, 15, and started harassing this guy in the village
on his property, and it's,
like, right outside his home.
And one of them tear-gassed him, and then
the
army came, and they arrested the Palestinian, of course, and they tried to stop us from documenting and recording, but we were still able to. and then the army kidnapped this Palestinian and held him in a military base for about a day. he was beat and abused in that interim when he was held by the army.
and that's sort of, I think, a very emblematic, instance of what settler violence looks like, is just walking, acting like you own the place because you have an army backing you up, and just constantly at- attacking and harassing Palestinians. And I would say most often, it's just
low-key harassment of trespassing on their land,
settlers will have their sheep eat from Palestinians' grazing land and crops, and to steal their livelihood that way, and to just constantly use certain wells and force them out of the area and threaten them with violence to not be able to access these wells or grazing lands or whatever it is.
And the overall idea is to make them so miserable that they just have to get up and leave, make them feel so unsafe and unable to pursue a livelihood that they have to move to, Area A, to the nearby Palestinian cities to just feel safe and be able to provide for their family. and, it's every single day.
and then is the, after that the goal is to proclaim the land state land and start to clear it?
Yeah, that's exactly right. There-- Israel uses old Ottoman laws. So b- before 1948, there was the British mandate of Palestine, and before that, the region was under Ottoman control, and there's this very cynical way in which Israel just picks and chooses which laws it wants from, every single recent controller of the region to just, to
meet its
goals.
And there's an Ottoman law, they use that if you don't tend to land for, I think, three years, then it's dubbed state land, and then they can, inevitably give that state land over to a new settlement project or neighborhood
or whatever it is. So the goal is, prevent people from accessing their lands and call it state land and give it to a settlement.
And of course, like I said before, just make them need to flee for their own safety and livelihood, and then grab what they, after they leave behind. there are, villages in the Jordan Valley that have been ex-expelled in this exact mechanism, and now some of those
ruins
of Palestinian villages that were expelled have outposts just cropping up in them amongst the abandoned Palestinian homes.
and this is all part of grabbing Area C, you know, using so, like after the Oslo Accords kind of take a step back. The West Bank was divvied up into Areas A, B, and C, with Area C being sixty something percent of the West Bank, and entailing most of the geography and about three hundred thousand Palestinians, I believe, living mostly in rural areas.
And
what the distinctions mean with the three areas
Yeah,
So Area A is ostensibly under Palestinian, under the control of the Palestinian Authority, though Israel raids in all the time, and Area A is made up of the big cities of, Ramallah and Nablus and Bethlehem. and Area B is basically typically the suburbs. That's under a mixture of Israeli and Palestinian control.
the Palestinian Authority is in charge of settle-
civil matters, but Israeli military controls security issues. And then there's Area C, which is under full Israeli civil and military control. So the Palestinians there are the
most disenfranchised of anyone in the Wes- West Bank, and that's the biggest target.
You know, Israel wants to grab as much of that land as possible and then sort of move on to Area A when it becomes necessary, which is already happening. There are settler outposts propping up in Area B and Area A, and settler attacks in Area B and Area A are happening. But on a state level, the plan is shove all the Palestinians into Area A and make any sort of contiguity impossible and basically create a series of Bantustans.
And then I guess, you know, if you wanna get into the weeds of it, ideally after that, kick them all out to Jordan or something
I think it's also just worth interjecting that Area A that ostensibly the Palestinian Authority controls, like, they, they are subservient to the Israeli government still. They don't have control of their borders. There still are, checkpoints through, through those cities, I believe, right?
Yeah, absolutely
control, electromagnetics field. it's not like this is actually sovereign territory. The PA is often described as a subcontractor of the Israeli occupation
Yeah, Palestinians overwhelmingly view the Palestinian Authority specifically Fatah and Abbas,the Palestinian prime minister and his political party, as being
completely
c- subservient to Israel. They see them as puppets of the occupation. they have zero power.
They don't control their own airspace. you mentioned checkpoints, probably the most common place for a checkpoint in the West Bank is in and out of Area A, because it's the easiest way for Israel to set up a checkpoint and basically guarantee that they won't inconvenience settlers at all but will make Palestinians miserable.
And the Palestinian Authority does not control its own budget. they don't control their own tax revenue. They don't control their own census. so they have no money. Smotrich has rampantly been withholding tax money from the Palestinian Authority. And last year, or maybe even two years ago, I think at this point, the Palestinian Authority helped Israel conduct horrific raids on, the city of Jenin, or the refugee camp of Jenin specifically, I believe, where PA forces were the
forces were
ones attacking and arresting and killing Palestinian citizens of Jenin
was that kind of a new development as far as the PA attacking its own citizens in such a blatant way?
in degree, in, in kind, no. In degree, yes. This has happened before of, there have even been waves of protests that were very horrifically suppressed by the PA.
but
this was definitely one of the most brutal cases, at least that I was exposed to in real time
So I think that even more sort of moderate liberal people are being woken up to the undeniable fact that the settlers and the army are working in tandem. But before you spend time on the ground, if you don't spend time on the ground, it's really, really hard to see the extent to which, and once you do spend time on the ground, it's impossible to not see the extent to which the settlers and the soldiers in the army are one and the same, and that if anything, the settlers are calling the shots and the army are just following orders.
The army, are subservient to the settlers. And since October 7th, there's a phenomenon of what we started calling
settler
soldier, of settlers who are just on reserve or whatever it is, and sometimes they're on reserve, sometimes they literally just throw their army uniform on and it's hard to tell the difference, where they're just, armed settlers from the outposts that have army level authority now, carrying out their violence and terrorism with even more impunity than they already had.
so many outposts, so many Hilltop Youth settlers deeply think that the army is against them,
they complain about the soldiers all the timeYou know, they rail against the former,
high up, high up military official named Yehuda Fox, who they hated, who is like, besides for being an army official who was upholding the occupation, was, like, a right-wing settler who they despise because they view him as not letting them commit enough violence
And these, these kids, it's my understanding that, you could describe them as at-risk youth, or I'd say crossed that boundary, whatever at risk means. but these are like intense religious Zionism, this is our land, this is like a biblical, we are, you know, conquering Eretz Israel, right?
Is that what's going on?
Yeah, absolutely. we say Hilltop Youth every...
The
typical settler of an outpost is basically there'll usually be, like, one older male of, you
know,
adult. They can range from anywhere to, like, 25 to, like, 40, 45, 50.
And there will be however many kids in the outpost,that are anywhere from 12 to 17 to 18, 19, maybe 20.
I don't think I've ever seen anyone that old. I'm sure that there's a lot of different pipelines in how these kids end up in those places.
But first of all, they absolutely believe the religious dogma of what they're doing. this is not a convenient front. They 100% believe what they're doing. But second of all, a way that, again, a lot, I'm not gonna, speak in absolutes, of them end up in these outposts is
that they come from broken homes, and, are funneled into these outposts
outposts literally
as a form of,farm therapy or whatever.
It's like, "Yeah, go hang out with the sheep and shepherd, and,
attack some Palestinians. You know, you'll get to be in nature."
and there are articles of how Smotrich is facilitating this funneling of people through these pipelines. Ironically, it's why Netanyahu has ridiculously dismissed Hilltop Youth and settlers and settler violence as just a handful of kids that aren't even from the West Bank.
some of them originally probably aren't, but now they've been living in these outposts for years, so what difference does it make? And of course, the number is bigger than he said he is. The severity of the out- of the violence is bigger than he said he is, and of course, the state is totally not only facilitating it in this rigorous way, but accommodating it in every other single way.
people know that it's happening, and they dismiss it as more fringe than it is.
typical, normal, moderate Israeli relationship to the occupation in general, is, "Oh, the settlers are bad and crazy, but they're fringe, and the settlements and the occupation are fine," and that really ends up encompassing all of it,
like, just
as much.
I think it's worth, trying to articulate how all these systems are connected. instance,I know people that, might say they disdain Hilltop Youth, and they disdain the way that the
Israeli
military supports, these organizations and allows them to do what they do, yet is maybe a little more ambivalent when it comes to the big settlement cities, such as Efrat, that you spent time in. and maybe there is a big distinction. I would love to hear you talk about,some of the, the misconceptions that may or may not be there when it comes to how these are all connected.
there's a distinction in that they're different things and that they look different. And there's definitely no distinction in the sense that they're like, at the end of the day, both entrenching the occupation, at the end of the day, both deep forms of violence.
I think that there's
this
very...
in, in sort of the broader defanging and whitewashing of settlements like Efrat,or other larger settlements, there's kind of two mechanisms at play. There's one that focuses on the people. There's one that say, you know, "Oh, they're not hilltop youth.
They're not radical. They're not ideological. They just live there because it's cheap," or this or that. and to that I would say, the people in Efrat are not ideological in the sense that under the right circumstances, they would probably move. They are ideological in the sense that if you were to poll them, like not a single one of them believes in a Palestinian state, not a single one of them, cares about Palestinians.
And, if they even know what they're doing, then they support it. if they know what the Green Line is, and a lot of people just like I didn't, don't, a lot of people don't understand they're on occupied land, they would not care.
the settlements in general, and I think Efrat in particular, are disproportionately American compared to the rest of Israeli society, and a lot of these people have no idea what they're doing. And also, you can look at polling numbers.
you can look at the numbers from the 2022 elections. I think 40% of people in Efrat voted for Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir. They voted for the Religious Zionist party. They voted for, the most extreme Kahanist party, so that's the people that we're saying are, "Oh, they're not so extreme."
And the second, more salient point is that it doesn't matter. it doesn't matter what they think. It matters what you do, actions speak louder than words, and you're living on occupied land in a settlement that is entrenching the occupation in a place that your presence causes harm to other people.
It reduces the likelihood of a Palestinian state. It brings soldiers into the region to further suppress and attack and kill Palestinians. And the other sort of whitewashing, most common whitewashing technique I've heard is almost this, too big to fail logic, "Oh, it'd be part of Israel in a two-state solution anyway," or, "Oh,"
whatever it is.
And that, to me, is just
Such an
immoral line of thinking that's basically, "Oh, well, they've committed so much harm at this point that they can get away with it, so what... Who cares?" You know? It's this, this idea that because the settlements are so big,
that
they've changed the facts on the ground.
Yeah, that just means it worked. That just means that Efrat was, is the gold standard of a settlement. That's not better than being a hilltop. In many ways, it's worse.
you mentioned that when you first started this work, you felt like where you were as somebody leading birthright trips starting to kinda hang out and out and do some protective presence in the West Bank, you felt like there wasn't a lot of difference in your positionality. I imagine you would say there is a big difference now from you as the birthright tour
Yeah.
what are those big differences.
my positionality is still changing to this day, and that this is all an ongoing process.
I think the biggest thing that changed is doing the work, and meeting Palestinians, and hearing their experience, and shifting more and more from, like I said in that article, the observed injustice to this affects me personally, and maybe not affects me personally, but from the philosophical, intellectual knowledge that I think occupation is bad, that I think having people under military rule is bad, and that I think, all these different forms of violence are bad, that is
wildly,
wildly different than my friends are being oppressed, you know?
I visited Ara weekly in Mahir. I was at his oldest child's second birthday. I met his youngest child a week after he was born, I have friends that have been arrested and held overnight and tortured by the IDF. I've been, kidnapped and tortured by the Israeli military for being mistaken for being Palestinian, and just like anyone else, as smart and intellectual as I may think of myself, I'm, just as beholden to my lived experiences as anyone else, and that drastically changes your positionality when you see those things happen day after day, and when they happen to you, and there's no,
towing the line after that anymore
the world gets so much bigger when you're not afraid. I've seen so much more...
I, in a deeply ironic way, I've seen so much more of Palestine than I, than any Zionist you know?but I've been to Ramallah, I've been to Yatta, I've been,
all over the West Bank to places that I was constantly told that I couldn't go to. And when you just go in a way that actually respects people's dignity and show that, I'm with you, all of a sudden it's way easier and to me, it's, just so important in terms of having grown up unequivocally being told that these people wanna hurt me and that these people wanna kill me, and just see, like,
you know, that thing you said is impossible, that, like, there's, there's no way to just sort of live in actual equal harmony together. You know, I, I did it
I just think that, we're the ones that can do something.
I know that people can wake up, because I woke up. I know that people can kinda see what happened, because it happened to me, and I know that I've changed people's minds, I, have had people message me on social media, people that I grew up with, and, they're like, oh, you know, either ask questions or ask for more information, or just tell me like, "Yo, your posts have been really eye-opening and interesting."
And I don't think these people have turned on a dime. I don't think these people are card-carrying anti-Zionists now that are, like, putting in the work for,Palestinian justice. But
maybe
they'll just be a little less totally in line with the machine. And,
try and take it one step at a time, try and think that if I change a single mind,
that is amazing.
And that for every idiot that crashes out in my Facebook comments or blocks me and calls me, a self-hating Jew or H@mas or whatever,
i-if
I change even one person's mind, then, that's a net win. And if every single person like me changes one person's mind, then the state of the Jewish community will be in, a way better place, and the state of, Palestinian liberation will hopefully be in a meaningfully different place
Sam, thank you so much for coming on The Thin Veil and sharing your, experiences and stories with us. It, it's so nice to, have you here
Thank you. My pleasure, and thank you for having me
us
Well, there you have it. Thank you so much, Sam, for coming on the show, sharing your experience. Thank you for the incredible work that is ongoing that you are doing and, the fact that you've, are dedicating your life now to doing this work is amazing.
Please help support Sam through his Patreon page linked in the show notes. Follow him on Instagram. You could support, of course, the show here in the same ways. I will leave links to all that in the show notes. Thank you so much for doing what you are doing. We will see you next week.
here? And thank you for being here