What Do They Mean She’s a ‘Settler’? By: Lori Lowenthal Marcus
I showed my mother the headline about the stabbing. “A ‘settler’? Why did they call her a settler?”
I wanted my mother to come and see how absurd it is for the entire world – including virtually the entire Jewish world, and that includes most Jews who think of themselves as pro-Israel – to refer to the Jewish towns and communities beyond the 1949 Armistice Line as “settlements” in the “West Bank.”
But I never anticipated she would be at my side as we heard and saw, from a distance of just a few miles, a horrific terrorist attack.
This was the attempt by an Arab terrorist to run down and murder several Jews – any Jews, it didn’t matter who – with his car. When he failed to hit anyone, he jumped out of his car and began stabbing Jews who were just standing on the side of the road at a bus stop.
It happened yesterday, and by now most people who care about Israel have heard about Nov. 10, a day of rage, sadly one of many, a day of disparate attempts to murder as many Jews as possible. Attacks took place within the ’49 Armistice Lines and outside of them. It doesn’t matter, they want to kill us wherever we are.
One of the stabbing murders took place in Tel Aviv.
Just a few days ago one of my daughter’s friends, a young woman who is studying in Israel also this year, told us she really likes to go to Tel Aviv.
“Why?” I asked her.
“Because I never have that weight on my shoulder, wondering if there is going to be some horrible terrorist attack, like we have in Jerusalem.”
But now they’re everywhere.
Everywhere Jews try to live normal lives in their own state, the one country Jews are supposed to feel safe. The one place from which we can’t be thrown out, hunted down or forced to convert. So far it’s still true, but even here it is becoming harder and harder and in my opinion it is because we apologize when we try to protect our people.
For some inexplicable (to me) reason we still have a greater fear of offending those who either hate us or who sympathize with those who do, than we do of constantly burying our own. Our own who die as a direct result of hatred towards us.
My mother and I were just starting our walk back from another residential area here in Efrat when we heard the first siren. I was on the phone with my younger daughter, it was around 5:00. We were discussing when she was going to walk over to the house for dinner. Her classes had ended for the afternoon and she didn’t have to be back at the seminary until 8:30 p.m.
She remarked that she could hear the siren over the phone and also outside of her building. Mom and I walked down to the main road to start back when the catch in my stomach grew. I kept hearing more sirens and seeing ambulances and police cars race by and out of Efrat, heading east.
There were too many.
My mother said there must have been a car accident, but I didn’t think so.
I could see from where we were walking that the emergency vehicles were congregating near a place I know well. Alon Shvut. It’s one of the Jewish communitites in Gush Etzion. It’s right next to where the big supermarket and the gas station are.
It’s also right next to the spot from which the three Jewish teenagers were kidnapped in June. The boys – we all called them “Our Boys” whose abduction set off a manhunt for two weeks, ending with the discovery of their bodies. Our boys: Eyal Yifrach, Gilad Shaar and Naftale Fraenkel.
My cell phone rang and it was my daughter telling me the seminary leaders would not allow her to walk over to our house.
Those sirens? There was a stabbing attack just outside of Allon Shvut. Just behind and down the road from her seminary. Allon Shvut, the place where we had dropped off one of her friends the other night after returning from an event in Jerusalem. It is right next to the gas station at which we had stopped after dropping him off.
We told my daughter we would drive over and get her as soon as we got back to the house and could get in the car. I also wanted to check the news to see what exactly was happening.
Three people had been stabbed by an Arab terrorist at the bus stop just outside of Allon Shvut. One of them, a young woman, died almost immediately. Initial reports said she was 14, but she was actually in her mid-twenties. Still far too young to die. And just because she was a Jew.
When I explained to my mother what had happened, she digested it and – I’m sure thinking it would comfort me – told me that really, it could happen anywhere in the U.S. That it happens all the time in the U.S. People are stabbed and die just because they are standing in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I showed her the first headline I saw reporting the attack. “Settlers stabbed, one dead.”
My mother’s large green eyes opened wide.
“Settler? What do they mean ‘settlers?’”
“That’s right. Why do you think they used that word?”
I think my mother is beginning to get it. When the media refers to the Jews out here, just a few miles south of Jerusalem, as “settlers,” it turns them into something less deserving of sympathy. It is a constant form of delegitimization not only of the Jewish state, but also of Jews.
The drive from my house to pick up my daughter at seminary usually takes about six minutes. Last night it took much longer. Why? The gate was locked. The community security decided to prevent anyone from leaving. They wanted to make sure no more assailants were in the area, looking for more Jews to kill.
Traffic backed up trying to leave Efrat after terrorist stabbing attack in Gush Etzion. Nov. 10, 2014.
For the first time since I’ve been in Efrat the entrance gate was locking us in, not just keeping others out. It was a strange sensation.
But, this being Israel, things were cleared fairly quickly, and everyone moved on. The traffic once again flowed freely, the blood from the stabbings was washed away, and life returned to the way it was before. Mostly.
Comments are closed.
