Primo Levi’s words echo across the daily routine of Israelis and Palestinians

Israeli soldiers at a West Bank checkpoint, October 2022

Amira Hass writes in Haaretz on 30 May 2023:

“You who live secure / In your warm houses / Who return at evening to find / Hot food and friendly faces.” Primo Levi, “Shema,” 1946.

• While you were waking up with the Shema prayer on the radio, earthmoving equipment from Israel’s Civil Administration in the West Bank was already razing a school, three tents and a water cistern, and tens of thousands of laborers were crowding at checkpoints to enter Israel.

• While you were brushing your teeth, young men in tzitzit were chopping down an olive tree, and thousands of laborers continued to pass through checkpoints.

• While you were making an omelet, soldiers were arresting a shepherd, binding his wrists, covering his eyes with a cloth and bringing him to an army base.

• While your son was leaving for school, soldiers were firing tear gas grenades, and women and children were choking.

• While the babies’ nanny was arriving, Israeli police officers disguised as produce merchants were raiding the Jenin refugee camp.

• While you were getting on your bicycle, there were already three dead and eight wounded in the camp; one school had been destroyed; five cubic meters of purchased water had gone to waste; one tent had collapsed; frightened goats had scattered; a woman had passed out from the tear gas and was rushed to the hospital; 13 trees had been cut down; soldiers excited by their successful mission had returned to their Jeep and laborers had reached the construction sites four hours after leaving their homes.

• When you got to work you received a WhatsApp text from your brother, the soldier. “Miss you.”

• While you were checking emails on your computer, three Civil Administration officers were rejecting applications from 286 farmers for permission to reach their land on the other side of the separation barrier.

• While you were chatting with a colleague, the Red Cross was informing a mother that the army wouldn’t let her visit her sick son in prison.

• While you were taking a coffee break, a boy was bursting into tears because a soldier had aimed a rifle at him at a flying checkpoint on the road to Nablus.

• While you were going to the bathroom, the Civil Administration was approving the construction of 48 housing units in a settlement outpost that had been legalized.

• While you were sending your weekly report to the boss, the finance minister was announcing that he was robbing another 120 million shekels ($32 million) from Palestinian Authority revenue.

• While you were going up to the roof for a smoke and a stretch, a young Palestinian was being placed in solitary confinement at Kishon Prison on his eighth day in custody after being interrogated by the Shin Bet security service for 15-and-a-half hours while sitting on – and tied to – a low chair.

• While you and mom were deciding what to make for Friday night dinner, the Palestinian Finance Ministry announced that this month PA employees would receive only 60 percent of their wages, and 62 vehicles were already waiting at the flying checkpoint.

• While you were stubbing out a cigarette, a prison doctor was giving acetaminophen to the young interrogee who had complained of back pain and numbness in his hands, and a soldier at the flying checkpoint was firing stun grenades at drivers and passengers who got out of their cars.

• While you were returning to the computer, a Civilian Civil Administration infrastructure officer was ordering the destruction of a water pipe in a village in the Jordan Valley.

• When you left the office, you didn’t notice the laborers putting up a luxury apartment building among ficus trees as part of a raze-and-rebuild program.

• While you were picking up your eldest son from school (a Thursday treat), a Hebron municipality driver was filling a tank with water from the main pipe at the entrance to the Palestinian town of Bani Nai’m, and the soldiers were releasing the shepherd whom they had arrested. He had a headache because the soldiers didn’t give him any water.

• While your son was telling you about the soccer game, four young men carrying a large Israeli flag were invading a house near a spring they took over long ago in a village west of Ramallah.

• While you were going to your neighborhood grocery store, the Hebron municipality driver was bringing water to a neighborhood that hasn’t had running water for three months because the water pressure is too low because Israel restricts the quantities of water to non-Jews.

• While you were returning home, teenagers wearing kippot were kicking an old man wearing a kaffiyeh.

• While you were changing a diaper, a teenager from the “hilltop youth” tweeted: “Praise God for the large Jewish presence in the area and Jewish shepherds who reconquered the territory… Bedouin [from the village of Ein Samiya] are leaving the area… We want all the Bedouin… to leave the country. There’s better pasture land in Saudi Arabia.”

• While you were chopping a tomato, the TV news was reporting that an Arab had been convicted of incitement and sentenced to a year in prison.

• While you were reading your son a bedtime story, the High Court of Justice was issuing two learned rulings, one allowing the state to destroy villages and replace them with a military firing range, the other letting the Shin Bet keep detaining a Palestinian man who has been already in custody without charges or evidence for 19 months straight.

• While your baby’s cries were waking you up, masked soldiers were raiding 17 villages, refugee camps and neighborhoods, arresting eight men. And while you were returning to bed, a 4-year-old boy was wetting his pants because soldiers had brought his entire family out of their home and into the yard, their rifles trained on them.

• While you were waking up, nine land-theft orders drafted by military jurists were awaiting the signature of the Civil Administration chief.

And there was evening and there was night and there was good morning Israel.

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