“Why are you anti-Semitic?” Hebron activist Baruch Marzel asked a group of
foreign tourists led by a Palestinian guide from Beit Sahur around noon on
Tuesday.
They had come on an eventful day to see the West Bank city of
Hebron, and stopped by a three-story apartment building, which the IDF has
ordered its Jewish residents to evacuate by 3 p.m.
The residents moved in
Thursday without the proper permits.
The foreign tourists in this group,
along with their guide, did not think the Jews should be there, even with the
proper government permits.
Marzel himself had not moved into the
apartment, but was among those Hebron residents who stood outside in support of
their neighbors.
“Why can’t I buy here, but I can buy a house in London?”
Marzel asked.
When British tourist Jeff Rodin tried to explain to him
that the structure did not belong to Jews, Marzel corrected him.
“We
bought the house. We have all the papers. Why do you attack the Jews
immediately?” asked Marzel, who is a mid-size man with glasses, brown hair and a
beard.
He wore a short sleeve button down shirt, and an orange plastic
band on his wrist, a symbol of the settler fight against the 2005 Gaza
pullout.
Marzel waved his arms and hands for emphasis as he spoke with
Rodin.
“Are you an anti-Semite? Are you against Jews?” he asked as he
raised his voice to be heard.
“Can a Jew buy a house here or not?” he
asked again.
“No,” said Rodin whose voice was much lower and harder to
hear.
The gray-haired tall man wore a white baseball cap, a checkered
blue short sleeve shirt and a black knapsack.
“So you are an anti-Semite.
You are a racist,” said Marzel. “We are not in Germany,” he added making a
reference to the Holocaust during World War II.
The Palestinian tour
guide Muhammed Bannoura tried to intervene to calmly explain that an agreement
prevented such a purchase.
But Marzel said that no such deal
existed.
Bannoura tried again to tell Marzel that this area was part of a
Palestinian state.
Marzel rejected that idea as well.
“Then where
is a Palestinian state?” Bannoura wanted to know.
“Who said there are
Palestinians? Who said they have a nation?” Marzel answered with his own
question.
“Who said there are Israeli Jews?” Bannoura shot
back.
Touching Marzel lightly on the shoulder he said, “You are occupying
our land.”
After Marzel left, Bannoura told The Jerusalem Post that he
believed in a two-state solution, but that does not include Israelis living in
Hebron.
Bannoura said it was important to him to bring people from around
the world to the area so they could learn about the situation.
“We
believe that we can all live together, Palestinians and Israelis,” he said. “But
the Israeli settlers should not be here. They have to move out of here, this is
Palestinian land.”