Trampling on the land

While at dinner on Friday night, a CBS reporter - testing me on my liberal thinking and sympathy for Arabs - asked me whether I believed that Israel was given to the Jews by God. "Of course I do. And, by the way, this does not give us the right to trample on those who were already living here. If this land was given to us by God, we must treat the inhabitants with some respect (differentiating of course between terrorists and just-regular folk)" A sad example of this "trampling" I received in an e-mail this morning.


Translated from Hebrew:

Yesterday Hani Totech, a colleague of my son Doron, called me. Doron had told him that I might be able to give some publicity to the flagrant injustice done to him and his family by the army who on Tuesday morning November 22nd destroyed their home without any prior notice.

Today I visited the family, father, mother and five small children, who now live near the ruins of their home in a tent that belongs to the Red Cross.

This is their horror story:

Hani Totech built his house fifteen years ago without permit. This is normal practice for the inhabitants of Wadi Joz near the old city of Jerusalem, since permits to build in that area are not given to Arabs, even though some families already lived there before the six-day war.

In the late nineteen-nineties, Hani was sued by law and ordered to pay a fine of 50.000 shekel. Today, in November 2005, he is still paying monthly installments.

On November 22nd, Hani’s wife phoned him at his job, and told him that dozens of soldiers had encircled the house and were carrying the furniture to the neighbors. They said they had come to destroy the house. This was a complete surprise. There had been no previous warning or announcement whatsoever.

Hani phoned his lawyer, who told him to take a cab and join him immediately. Together they went to court where an order was issued to stop all activities until further notice. Hani phoned his wife to tell her he was on his way home with the court order. He also sent a copy of the order by fax to one of the neighbors. Next he got into a taxi and hurried home.

When the soldiers heard that a court order had been issued to stop the works, they didn’t lose one minute but put their bulldozer to task with lightning speed. When Hani arrived, soldiers caught him some fifty meters from his home and didn’t let go of him until the house was in ruins.

The lawyer (who had earned 5000 dollar on the case five years ago) advised Hani not to pursue the matter any longer. “You will lose all your money and gain nothing. Be wise and keep your money to raise your children,” he said.

On my ironic question whether Hani expected the fine of 50.000 shekel to be reimbursed to him, he answered seriously: “No, I still have to pay the installments, otherwise they’ll put me in jail.”

I can’t give Hani his house back, and of course he doesn’t expects that from me. But he asked me to give publicity to his story.

“Tell your friends that my little boy came home from school and saw the ruins of our home. Television people were filming. They asked him for his reaction. He answered: ‘I hope they’ll all die.’ Tell the Jews that for years my wife and I have been raising our children in an atmosphere of tolerance and goodwill. We don’t want them to grow with hatred in their hearts. But what can we do now to avoid them feeling the way they do?”

For me the question remains: How will the Totech family spend the rainy season? Seven people in a small tent, without toilets, without heating, without any comfort?

And also this: Is it really impossible to claim some compensation for the terrible injustice that our army has done while knowing that a court order had been issued against demolishing the house?