The Opposite of Silence

Phil Zabriskie/Jerusalem, TIME, 20.10.07. There is an Israeli group called Breaking the Silence, former soldiers who want to publicize what they’ve seen and done in the Palestinian Territories in order to counter what they perceive as Israeli leadership's desire to obscure what happens day-to-day in the name of security, and an inclination amongst the public to ignore it. They’ve collected several hundred interviews with ex-soldiers, staged exhibitions, and, with a group called Children of Abraham, they lead tours in Hebron. Members act as guides, discussing past experiences and current dynamics. They tour Hebron because there is an Israeli-administered area in the middle of the town, IDF soldiers protecting small groups of Israeli settlers, which Israeli citizens can legally enter. Plenty attention paid to the historical Jewish presence in Hebron, the strife between populations, the still-resonant massacre in 1929 of 67 Jews by Arabs, the near wholesale absence of Jews in Hebron until after the 1967 War. Their route into Hebron passes through Kiryat Arba, one of the larger West Bank settlements, wherein one finds Rabbi Meir Kahane Park and the grave of Baruch Goldstein. In 1994, Goldstein, an American-born doctor and resident of Kiryat Arba, shot and killed 29 Palestinians as they prayed in the Muslim section of the Tomb of the Patriarchs and was then himself killed. He was a follower of Kahane, a man who called Arabs a “cancer” that must be excised and founded the extremist Kach Party, which Israel outlawed and branded a terrorist organization. The guide starts to speak. A man storms into the circle loudly denouncing the tour’s presence, accusing everyone of planning to defile a holy site. This is Noam Federman from Tel Rumedia, a small settlement inside Hebron, a Kahanist who has been jailed in the past. Federman reaches the guide and shoves him in the chest with both hands. Yehuda Shaul, a Breaking the Silence founder, pulls out his video camera. When the guide speaks, Federman shouts or sings over him. Other settlers arrive, including Baruch Marzel, another of Kahane's American-born, oft-arrested acolytes and the founder of an outfit called the Jewish National Front. One of the settlers calls Shaul a terrorist and a Nazi. The police come. The guide accuses Federman of assault. Federman, despite the roughly 30 witnesses, accuses the guide and Shaul of assaulting him. The guide, Shaul, and Federman must all go to the police station to give statements. The tour continues into town, a Children of Abraham member pressed into the role of tour guide. Through a fortified army checkpoint, shuttered shops in an abandoned marketplace along the main road, which is closed to the Palestinians who make up roughly 80% of Hebron's population. An IDF military outpost that's also, for some reason, home to some settler families. Pathways Palestinians use to get to their homes since they can't drive or walk on the roads they once used. A checkpost at the edge of Tel Rumeida, where further passage is denied for security reasons. One feels the absence of leaders ready to confront the complexities and perils of this place. One feels the the prominent presence of people who think this bizarre, embattled state is how things are supposed to be, as dictated by book, or history, or psyche.

Near Tel Rumeida, Baruch Marzel, who’d been with Federman at the Goldstein grave--and who once advocated assassinating the founder of Peace Now--turns up again. “You are hearing nothing but lies,” he says. “Have you heard the history? Have you heard about Jews who were killed?”

“Yes,” says a tour participant. “Yes, we have.”

“Not the real truth,” Marzel responds. “They terrorize us, attack us constantly, and these people”—the tour leaders—“tell you lies.” Presumably, he feels the same about B’tselem, which just released a report on settler violence in Hebron, saying it's getting worse.

On the way out, the original guides return from the police station. One tour member had video of the confrontation, but says a file was opened, an investigation begun, into the charges against and made by Federman. Thus endeth the tour.