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Dena FaceTimes her dad
How Israeli Apartheid Destroyed My Hometown
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7,201,628 views Oct 28, 2022 #israel #hebron #palestine
Segregated streets. Settler violence. Military harassment. This happens all over the occupied West Bank, but perhaps nowhere are these scenes more concentrated than in the Old City of Hebron. The once vibrant Palestinian cultural center is now ground zero of Israeli apartheid. It’s also where AJ+‘s Dena Takruri’s family calls home.
In this deeply personal documentary, Dena spends a day in Hebron retracing the footsteps of her father, who was born and raised in Hebron. She talks to Palestinians who are subjected to daily harassment from the Israeli military and settlers. And she is guided through the city by former Israeli soldiers, who tell her why their conscience is now forcing them to speak out against the occupation.
00:00 Introduction
3:17 The journey to Israeli apartheid ground zero
4:12 Harassment at a military checkpoint
6:53 How Hebron’s streets are segregated by ethnicity
9:00 “It’s like a prison”: A child’s perspective
11:08 How did Hebron get to be this way?
14:54 Why this former Israeli soldier is speaking out
15:24 The street that became a ghost town
17:55 Dena FaceTimes her dad
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Transcript
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Introduction
0:03
This is what I experienced minutes after setting foot in my family’s hometown.
0:11
We literally just got here.
0:12
We went through the first military checkpoint.
0:14
And a bunch of soldiers stopped us, starting yelling at us.
0:18
I’m in the Old City of Hebron in the occupied West Bank,
0:21
a place that once bustled with life.
0:23
But I’m about to see what Israel’s occupation
0:26
and settlers have done to the heart of this city -
0:32
- and to the people who live here.
0:38
I’m a Palestinian American journalist,
0:40
and I’ve spent much of my career reporting on the occupied territories.
0:44
But Hebron, one of the West Bank’s largest cities,
0:47
is also my roots.
0:49
My father was born and raised here.
0:51
I’ve returned to learn how the occupation has decimated his beloved hometown,
0:55
a place he hasn’t been back to in years.
1:05
I know it's really hard for him to see this. And so it's emotional for me.
1:14
So we’re officially on our way to Hebron.
1:17
My team and I are going to Hebron’s Old City, which is ground zero of Israeli apartheid.
1:22
Today, 33,000 Palestinians live in this part of Hebron,
1:27
which is under full Israeli military control
1:30
and fragmented by checkpoints, military outposts and around 1,000 Israeli settlers
1:36
who live here in violation of international law.
1:54
But before we get into all of that, let me back up.
1:57
It wasn’t always like this.
1:59
This is my dad.
2:01
He was born in Hebron in 1947.
2:04
He lived up the hill from the Old City, where his father and uncle owned a quarry.
2:09
The year after my dad was born,
2:10
Israel was established
2:12
in what Palestinians refer to as the Nakba,
2:14
or "catastrophe."
2:16
That’s because hundreds of thousands
2:18
of Palestinians were expelled from their homes
2:20
to clear the way for the creation of a Jewish state.
2:24
But the West Bank, including Hebron,
2:26
fell under the control of Jordan.
2:28
My dad was 19 in June of 1967,
2:30
when Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza,
2:33
East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights,
2:35
and began a military occupation
2:37
that still has no end in sight.
2:39
My dad was in college in Jordan at that time,
2:42
so he wasn’t in Hebron to witness that,
2:44
or to see how Jewish settlers
2:46
took over parts of the Old City.
2:48
A few years later, he moved to the U.S. for graduate school.
2:51
I was born and raised in San Francisco and grew up
2:54
hearing my dad reminisce about his childhood,
2:56
like how he raised chickens and rabbits on the hill as he watched the vibrant city below.
3:01
When my family would travel to Palestine in the
3:04
summers, my dad couldn’t come because of work.
3:07
Now, even though he’s retired, he says he doesn’t want to return
3:10
because he refuses to be humiliated by Israeli soldiers.
3:14
He’s only been back to Hebron three times.
The journey to Israeli apartheid ground zero
3:17
But I’m returning, to see with my own eyes what has become of the city that made my father
3:22
and me who we are today.
3:24
And that all begins with me actually getting there.
3:27
It's only about 20 miles from Ramallah, where we're starting out.
3:30
But we can't, as Palestinians, access
3:32
parts of the main north-south highway
3:34
because that's reserved exclusively
3:36
for cars with Israeli license plates.
3:38
So here’s another checkpoint.
3:41
Instead, we have to take narrower roads
3:44
and cross through several Israeli military checkpoints.
3:47
Here’s another checkpoint.
3:48
That means it takes much, much longer to get there.
3:53
We're finally in Hebron.
3:57
I'm sure my dad knows these streets inside and out.
3:59
He used to walk all over here as a child.
4:01
So, this is literally retracing his footsteps,
4:04
but it’s very different now than when he grew up.
4:08
Today, many parts of the city are off-limits to Palestinians.
Harassment at a military checkpoint
4:12
Alright, gonna go through.
4:13
Because I'm Palestinian, I’m not allowed to enter parts of the Old City.
4:17
So I'm meeting former Israeli soldiers who I hope will help me access my family’s hometown.
4:23
Hi, how are you? Ori?
4:25
Yes.
4:25
Nice to meet you. I’m Dena.
4:27
Ori and Joel are with the Israeli anti-occupation group
4:30
Breaking the Silence.
4:32
They used to serve in the Israeli army.
4:34
But now they give tours of Hebron to expose the reality of how Israel treats Palestinians.
4:43
But before they could even start showing me around, this happened.
5:12
My Palestinian film crew - who have the proper credentials -
5:16
are sadly used to experiencing this kind of nationalistic harassment and taunting.
5:23
So I’ve been in the Old City for about five minutes, and we were already stopped by -
5:33
We literally just got here.
5:35
And a bunch of soldiers stopped us, started yelling at us,
5:38
started harassing my cameraman.
5:40
They just asked to see our IDs. I showed my U.S. passport.
5:43
To all of a sudden to have like six or seven armed Israeli soldiers just swarm you,
5:47
it’s honestly really upsetting that this is how you get welcomed to your own home city.
5:52
The former soldiers I’m spending the day with say this is a typical scene.
6:19
Finally, the soldiers give us back our IDs.
6:44
But what a way to start the day.
6:46
I’m about to learn that what I just experienced is nothing
6:49
compared to what the Palestinians who live here go through every day.
How Hebron’s streets are segregated by ethnicity
6:58
This is Fadel, who has lived in this home his whole life.
7:01
In the 1980s, Israel set up this checkpoint in front of his house.
7:05
Fadel now has to check in every time he leaves or enters his own home.
7:28
Wow.
7:30
Fadel isn’t alone.
7:32
Thousands of other Palestinians in Hebron
7:34
are also forced to pass military checkpoints just to go home.
7:38
The military also bans Palestinians from using certain streets,
7:42
as Ori shows me.
8:16
All these restrictions help Israel maintain its hold on Hebron.
8:20
But they’re also in place to protect Israeli settlers,
8:23
and the ones in Hebron
8:24
are known for being among the most violent in all of the occupied West Bank.
8:50
The soldiers never protect the Palestinians.
“It’s like a prison”: A child’s perspective
9:01
This is kind of a common sight here in the Old City.
9:04
There's a Palestinian family that lives at the end of this alleyway,
9:07
above them is an Israeli settlement.
9:09
And because the settlers throw garbage down at them,
9:12
they have to put these nets here to protect them.
9:24
The family at the end of the alley is the Sidrs.
9:27
Just a few weeks before I arrived to Hebron,
9:29
nearby settlers accused their 13-year-old daughter, Salwa,
9:32
of picking a knife up off the ground.
10:19
So we’re standing here, and I’m talking to her in front of her home,
10:22
and every time we hear a noise she looks up.
10:24
And I asked her, “Are you afraid the settlers are throwing something down at you?”
10:27
And she said, “Yeah.”
10:59
Just talking to her, it’s really ... you don’t feel safe at all.
11:03
It’s not a life that people should or can accept.
How did Hebron get to be this way?
11:08
So how did Hebron end up feeling like a prison for its people?
11:12
After the Israeli occupation began in 1967,
11:14
Hebron was among the first places
11:17
Jewish settlements were built.
11:19
This illegal land-grab captured
11:20
international attention:
11:21
Now there's pressure for large-scale
11:24
Jewish resettlement.
11:25
And to some people, this looks
11:26
very much like colonization.
11:28
Some settlers said that they were coming to
11:30
Hebron because of its sacred place in Judaism
11:33
as the burial site
11:34
of Prophet Abraham and his family.
11:36
Others said they moved there in response to
11:38
a massacre of Jews that happened in 1929.
11:41
That’s when rising tensions
11:43
over European Jewish immigration
11:44
aimed at turning Palestine into
11:46
a Jewish state led to violence.
11:49
More than 60 Jews were killed, and homes and
11:51
synagogues were destroyed in the ancient city.
11:54
But even after the settlers moved in,
11:56
Hebron’s streets weren’t segregated.
11:58
Then in 1994, everything changed.
12:01
An American Israeli settler armed with an assault
12:04
rifle entered the Ibrahimi Mosque during Ramadan
12:07
and killed 29 Palestinians.
12:09
Palestinian fury as the victims of the mosque
12:12
massacre are rushed to hospital in Hebron.
12:15
Doctors say most were shot in the back
12:17
as they knelt to pray.
12:18
The shooter was ultimately
12:19
overpowered by survivors and killed.
12:21
But today, many Israelis in nearby settlements
12:24
continue to honor him.
12:27
In response to this massacre
12:28
and the unrest that followed,
12:29
Israel punished the victims, closing off roads
12:33
and choking the economic lifeblood
12:34
of this Palestinian city.
12:36
You know, we're just seeing so many empty houses,
12:39
empty storefronts.
12:40
Israeli flags everywhere.
12:42
Soldiers stationed everywhere, checking us.
12:45
Since the crackdown, over 1,500 Palestinian-owned shops have closed for good,
12:51
and more than 1,000 Palestinian families have moved away from Hebron’s city center.
12:55
They have decimated the Old City, Israel has.
12:59
And it's really unfortunate to see.
13:00
I mean, this should be a thriving, bustling marketplace right now, and
13:04
it's completely empty.
13:09
She's harassing –
13:10
she's harassing a Palestinian right now.
13:12
Just ’cause he’s sweeping.
13:13
He’s sweeping.
13:36
Excuse me, don’t-
13:38
don’t, please don’t touch our camera.
13:40
That's wild.
13:42
The settler woman got mad at the Palestinian for sweeping the street.
13:45
And then she attacked us and our cameras
13:47
and tried to block us from filming.
13:50
Many of Hebron’s settlers moved here from the United States.
13:53
Sadio came from Brooklyn a few years ago.
13:56
Does it bother you that you're living somewhere so heavily militarized,
13:59
where Palestinians that have been here for generations
14:01
are getting kicked out of their houses and can't walk on certain streets?
14:04
So I'll ignore the use of the term Palestinian since there is no such nation or people.
14:10
It doesn't bother me at all.
14:12
Uh, militarization is a thing happening all across the world.
14:15
If I'm not up to anything, and nobody's invading my space for no reason, I don't care.
14:53
=====
So why do you give these tours?
The street that became a ghost town
15:24
So we're going to attempt to enter Shuhada Street right now.
15:27
No Palestinians are allowed to be on that street,
15:30
only Israelis and foreigners.
15:32
I'm going to enter on my U.S. passport.
15:34
Of course, I'm originally Palestinian, so we'll see how that goes.
15:36
While all of Hebron’s Old City has been affected by the occupation,
15:40
the most striking example might be Shuhada Street.
15:43
It used to be the city’s most
15:45
important, vibrant thoroughfare.
15:47
My dad went to middle school on this road,
15:50
and his family owned shops here.
15:52
But in the years following the 1994 massacre,
15:55
Palestinians have been banned from walking on this street,
15:58
even if they live on it.
16:00
The Israeli military welded these Palestinian doors shut.
16:18
This video shows what it takes for one
16:21
Palestinian woman to leave her home:
16:23
She climbs her roof and scales
16:25
back down to the ground
16:26
to exit on a backstreet where she is allowed to be.
16:30
But if you're a Jewish settler, you can walk out in the front, in front of your front door.
17:08
This is the old central bus station in Hebron,
17:11
and they turned it into a new military base that’s under construction there,
17:16
and behind it is a new settlement.
17:24
This is how absolutely devastated it is right now.
17:27
Settlers came
17:29
and just ravaged the whole place and
17:31
destroyed it.
17:32
This is the old fruit and vegetable market.
17:35
It was here and now what does the sign say, Ori?
17:39
The Old City has suffered. Everywhere you look there’s just deserted shops, deserted homes,
17:44
destruction, broken windows. And in the middle of it all, there's like
17:49
schools and settlements and Israeli settlers just living their lives
17:52
with the full protection of the military.
Dena FaceTimes her dad
17:55
You know, one thing that's really striking being here is how incredibly silent it is.
18:00
The only sound you hear is the flutter of these little Israeli flags above.
18:05
I keep thinking about how, you know, I directly descend from here.
18:10
Not only is it, like, sad on just a human level, but there's a very personal element
18:14
to this street as well.
18:15
I don't blame my dad for not wanting to come back, because it's that messed up.
18:20
So I'm trying to piece together exactly where my dad grew up.
18:23
You know, I've pieced together that that's where my family's home is.
18:27
And the view is of a bunch of Israeli flags and a military outpost on the hill over there.
18:33
And in between them, the cemetery where my grandparents are buried
18:37
and the home that my father grew up in.
18:39
So.
18:40
Man.
18:41
I wonder if he's awake right now. I should FaceTime him.
18:43
[ringing]
18:46
Hi, Baba.
18:49
How are you?
18:51
I wanna show you, I think this is where you grew up.
18:53
Is this?
18:56
Yeah, this is Shuhada.
18:58
There's nobody here except for some soldiers and a few settlers.
19:01
It's a total ghost town.
19:16
It's so sad.
19:24
This is the old vegetable market.
19:26
Does this look familiar to you?
19:42
I don't know. I feel really sad.
19:43
Like, he grew up right there.
19:45
You know, his parents are buried right there, and
19:49
I know it's really hard for him to see this. And so
19:51
it's emotional for me.
19:54
My dad wanted to talk to Ori.
20:35
I’m curious, how did you feel watching me talk to my dad and then speaking to him yourself?
20:52
What most haunts you and your conscience about what you did in your time as a soldier?
21:18
It's designed to break down the population of Palestinians and
21:22
show them who's in charge and
21:24
humiliate them on a daily basis.
21:55
All of it.
21:56
All of it.
21:56
We saw all of it.
22:00
It was a heavy day, but before it ended, I wanted to visit my father’s childhood home.
22:06
As I stood on the roof overlooking the Old City,
22:08
I thought about how the landscape today is completely different
22:11
from the one he looked out at when he stood in this same spot.
22:14
And I couldn’t stop thinking about everyone I met
22:17
and the price that they’re paying for remaining.
23:19
It’s hard to shake the idea that this Palestinian father could have been my dad.
23:24
I could have been Salwa. This could have been my life.
23:32
Hey everyone, thanks for watching this video
23:34
from al-Khalil here in Hebron.
23:37
Let me know in the comments
23:38
what surprised you most about this experience,
23:40
about this place.
23:41
And stay tuned for the rest of our videos
23:43
in our series filmed here
23:44
in the occupied West Bank.
23:46
Next up, I have a video looking at
23:47
the Palestinian Christian minority here.
===
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