HEBRON, West Bank, 8 February 2007 — Armed with just a camera, Hebron resident Fida Abu Aisha triggered a scandal in Israel over the mistreatment of Palestinians by Jewish settlers in the flash point West Bank city. “Fida’s video showed the world what happens here, that we are attacked every day by settlers,” said Taysir Abu Aisha, whose teenage daughter last month filmed shocking scenes of a Jewish woman settler harassing her Arab neighbors.
“But since then, we’ve only had promises, no action,” he complained, a month after the video was shot in the most volatile city in the West Bank. A pair of tapes videoed by Fida has made the rounds on the Internet and Israeli television channels, setting off a storm of protest and debate over what rights groups warn is rising settler violence in Hebron.
“The violence against the Palestinians has grown to a very scary height and on the ground, we haven’t seen much done,” said Limor Yehuda, a lawyer from the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. The video that sparked the latest controversy shows a woman settler shoving against a metal cage attached around the front of a Palestinian family’s home to protect it, cursing a Palestinian woman.
“Sharmuta” — Arabic for whore — the settler hisses over and over at Fida’s frantic mother, standing just inches away behind the iron bars. The settler holds the second syllable in her vicious taunt. “Sharmoooooota. Sharmooooota. You and all your daughters.” In a second video, young settler children hurl stones at Palestinian homes.
In both films, Israeli soldiers are seen hovering in the background but apparently do little to stop the attacks. Their inaction has triggered much of the outcry. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert expressed his “shame” after viewing the videos and the chairman of Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, Tommy Lapid, compared the abuse to the anti-Semitism of pre-World War II Europe.
To reach his clothing shop in the nearby market, Abu Aisha has to make his way from his home on a street barricaded off by Israeli soldiers and sandbags. He then has to skirt a wall erected around the Old City to protect about 500 Jewish settlers.
He passes beneath the watchful eyes of Israeli soldiers perched on the roofs of heavily guarded settler homes. At an army checkpoint straddling a main thoroughfare, Abu Aisha passes through a metal director.
Abu Aisha said the video served only to underline, once again, the daily grind of Palestinians living in the Old City, regularly attacked and humiliated by the settlers living around the Tomb of Patriarchs, holy to both Jews and Muslims.
