If there’s a Palestinian city that has been tormented to the brink of what’s humanly bearable, it’s Hebron, al-Khalil, the city of the prophets of Palestine. Human rights organizations have been denouncing for years the devastation of international legality and humanity occurring in the Palestinian city of occupied West Bank, at the center of which has settled, like an infected thorn, a community of messianic settlers, ultra-fanatics, and mentally deranged, mostly coming from the United States. Do you know those individuals with machine guns slung over their shoulders, sinister in appearance, violent, whose sole purpose in life is to harass the indigenous population in such a way as to force them to leave? Well, those are the settlers rampaging through Hebron, uprooting olive trees, setting Palestinian crops on fire, throwing stones at children going to school, spitting and cursing at the population, and scurrying like cockroaches to occupy the homes of Palestinians should they need to leave for any reason. Indeed, almost all Palestinian houses in Hebron are walled up to prevent their theft, with the Palestinians prisoners in their own homes. International legality at its highest levels according to the Israeli interpretation of the same.
Anyone with enough guts and cold blood try typing the city’s name on YouTube, for example, and will find themselves face to face with the most terrible of infernal circles. The death of law and rights is there, in the absolute impunity with which the most hateful crimes against humanity are committed.
At this moment, in that city, the settlers are celebrating Purim, with children in costumes accompanied by men armed with machine guns, in a sort of horror carnival.
The Orwellian dystopia had anticipated nothing of the sort.
Orly Noy, a Jew of Iranian origin who became Israeli despite herself, writes about it:
“It’s very hard to find the right words to narrate the madness we’re immersed in. But sometimes there’s a moment that presents itself as the distorted aim of this madness, of evil without obstacle, almost mesmerizing in its sight, that can perhaps replace the words that explain what we’ve become… The Purim celebrations in Hebron, in the heart of the land mafia of apartheid, are this moment.”
We’ve talked about the madness of a sick country, the dystopia, and even the zone of interest. It’s all there, all together. And it’s scary.