In August of last year a video was posted on X by the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem in which four masked settlers, three of them wielding clubs, can be seen walking onto a Palestinian man’s land. One settler, wearing a sheet of white cloth tied around the lower part of his face, is recorded insisting that the land, and therefore the home and the herds on it, had been bequeathed to him by his forefathers to whom God had given it millenia earlier. The Palestinian owner of the land and the home and the sheep says, in English, “What do you want?” The settler replies, also in English, “I want to dance with you, man.” The Palestinian says, “I’m not your bitch.” The settler replies, “You look sweet. You are my bitch. And you look sweet. You look so sweet.” And then he walks menacingly around the man in a circle before saying “I would be happy to sit with you in jail someday. I would be happy. You know Sde Teiman? Sde Teiman!” And he continues, in Hebrew, “Rape in the name of God, as they say. Understand? Rape in the name of God.” And then he makes a kissing noise before the video goes black.
The Other Obliteration: A Report from the West Bank
