vigil for olive trees cut by settlers in the Hebron area

On Thursday, October 22 , Israelis and internationals came to participate in a vigil against the destruction of olive tress own by Palestinians in the Hebron area. More then twenty trees, aged around twenty five, were cut down here in a field belonging to the Hoshia family (who are numbered a couple of thousands). It been said that Where they burned books, they will end burning humans, and what would happened in places where they cut 25 year old trees?
Members of Hoshia family tell me that they want the Israeli military (which control this area) to do their job and stop ignoring (or encouraging) the crimes that settlers commit here. Another field close by belonging to the Hashima family was taken over by settlers three years ago. The issue is currently debated in court, but that does not discourage the settlers from working the field and producing food, or the Israeli military from arresting any Palestinian who walks into thier fields.

I speak to H’aled Hoshia, a member of the of the family who tells me that it’s the same settlers who harass them, they come from the settlement of Mitspe Yair, and are probably the ones who cut the trees. Although they have been seen many times here attacking and threatening Palestinians, they have never been arrested or questioned. “if they (the settlers) had any respect to their religion they would have taken their Kippah (the skullcap traditionally worn by religious Jews) off. Where in the bible gods allows to cut 25 year old trees?” He stops for a second to take some of the cold Hebron air in. “we at our community resist and oppose the influence of violent Palestinian movements like the Hamas, why cant the Israeli public do the same when it come to Jews?” He looks at me, and I find myself speechless. I really don’t have any answers or hope that Israelis will oppose their military or the settlers from pushing us all into a never ending cycle of violence. H’aled feels my pessimism and says: “look” he says, “in a number of years ill be dead, I have a son, I want to die knowing that he will be left with something to survive on, I want to die in peace.”

All around us the wind takes our sad thoughts to the mountains around us. We are surrounded by the silent screams of dead trees, and the desperation weighs heavy on all of us. We all know that there is nothing that can be done about this, we all know that the settlers will get away with what they did once again and that they will not stop until all the olive trees belonging to Palestinians are either destroyed, or own by Jews. Looking at this slow process of expropriation, the negation of means to survive for Palestinians, and the legal and military system which ignores and protect these acts, I can see why in these extreme conditions one would commit itself to the politics of active nihilism. When all institutions and laws lose credibility, when all ways to make sense out of reality collapse, it is easy to embrace an ideology that sees life as abstract and unreal (or meaningless) and the only way to make meaning is through violent and spectacular destruction. The ideological dichotomy that some are left with in Palestine is either to support a failed idea of liberal democracy (which in Israel/occupied Palestinian amounts essentially to apartheid), or embracing metaphysical beliefs in which meaning can come through violent acts, and good can only come in the afterlife.

(the general idea here is taken from “infinitely demanding” by Simon Crichley)