The girls, aged 14 to 16, have come for settler training to learn how to occupy Palestinian land — breaking international law. “God promised us this land and told us if you don’t take it, bad people will try and take it and you will have a war,” says Emuna Billa, 19, one of the camp supervisors. “Why do we have a war in Gaza? Because we don’t take Gaza.”
Their guru is Daniella Weiss, a 79-year-old grandmother in a long skirt and patterned headscarf. Founder of the Nachala or Homeland movement, she has been setting up illegal settlements for 49 years and was recently put under international sanctions. “You will be the new emissaries,” she tells the 50 or so girls at the camp. “I call it redeeming, not settling and this is our duty.”
She unfurls a map of Israel and the Palestinian territories dotted with vivid pink house symbols to represent existing and proposed Jewish settlements. Not only are these all across the West Bank, but also in Gaza. Already 674 people have signed up for beachside plots there, she tells me, and “many more want to join”. When someone asks her about settling Lebanon she smiles and says, “Yes, there too”.
When you are traveling on the common backpacker routes, you’ll met a lot of young Israelis who recently finished their military service.
My expierience with them is, that those who are open minded and look at the world, are very much against what the narrow minded fundamentalists are doing at home and in Palestine.
We have to stop to condem big groups of people on the actions of a few. This just makes us xenophobic, racist and hostile to everything different.
Not all Israelis are violent fundamentalists. Judge the government and official forces, not the people.
Not all Palestinians are Hamas terrorists.
Not all Muslims are Islamists.
Not all Americans are white supremacists or suport immigrant children in cages.
Not all Germans are or were Nazis.
Not all mexicans are cartel gangsters.