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June 4th, 2016 
Awake Goy The following is a transcript of news coverage by Danish Radio’s Eva Plesner, May 19th 2016. Translation by Jonathan Ofir. Original title: “Did you know, that Airbnb offers rooms in the West Bank Jewish settlements? DR [Danish Radio] rents from the ultra-orthodox Jews in Esh Kodesh.” We pass it along because settlers’ intolerant attitudes (which we have sought to document) are so rarely conveyed to American readers.
The first checkpoint appears a few hundred meters up a narrow asphalt road, which winds off of main road 60 and constitutes the last 8-10 KM up to Esh Kodesh.
A young guard with a machine gun over his shoulder, asks where we are headed, before he presses a button to get the massive iron gate to slide open. The road here is only for Israelis. Arabs are not permitted entry, unless they have a special permit.
Esh Kodesh is a so-called outpost – and one of the West Bank’s most hardcore settlements, which has been involved in numerous conflicts since its establishment in 2001.
But none of this was mentioned in the description of the room we rented via Airbnb. It only said, that the room was in Israel.
This is a fact which brought Airbnb condemnation from human rights organisations and brought it into a long conflict, which is now being fought in the tourist sector.
After yet another checkpoint we are being guided through the last bit of road by our host, carpenter Benaya Zeev, over the mobile phone. And right there, where the asphalt road becomes a gravel road, he stands and greets us welcome.
Esh Kodesh resembles a combination of an American trailer-park and the Danish [hippie zone] Christiania in the 1970’s, as many of the roughly 300 residents still live in caravans. But we are to reside in a real wooden hut, with two terraces and a view over green hills.
– I have built it with my own hands, says Benaya Zeev (32), as he shows us around in the house together with his wife, Inbal Zeev (30).
There is a flat screen TV, but no signal.
– It’s against our religion, Inbal explains.
On the other hand, there are a lot of video films. The mattresses of the double-bed have an inbuilt massage-effect, there’s a separate parent bathroom with a Jacuzzi, and in the children’s room on the other side of the isle there are bunkbeds and space for eight children.
– We like big families, says Inbal with her hand upon her inflated abdomen. She is awaiting the couple’s sixth child in April.
Out in the kitchen there are cupboards which are empty except for three black ceramic cups and some disposable plastic cutlery – out of fear that ignorant guests as us would not respect kosher rules – where the rules demand that one never uses the same cutlery for meat and milk products.
– But you can call and order a pizza down at Shilo. They will deliver, says Inbal and writes the pizza’s phone number on a piece of paper.
It would appear from Inbal’s text on Airbnb, that Esh Kodesh is in Israel. But neither Shilo nor Esh Kodesh are in Israel.
They are in the West Bank, which Israel conquered from Jordan under the Six-Day War in 1967 and has been occupied ever since. Far away from the “Green Line”, which is the internationally recognized border, which was drawn in 1949 for the newly established state of Israel.
Since the Six-Day War the Jewish settlers have established their presence in the West Bank under Israeli military protection, and today there are over 400,000 [editor note – this number excludes East Jerusalem, which is also a West Bank settlement under international law – the correct number should thus be about 650,000 – critical comment was sent to DR] – in settlements, which according to international conventions are illegally established on occupied territory, and blocks the right of Palestinians to establish their own state.
This has also caused international protest, a growing number of settlers rent out rooms via Airbnb.
The popular website has come under attack for breaching international law and profiting from “stolen Palestinian land”, and a number of human rights organisations have promoted an international boycott of Airbnb.
For our host couple, nonetheless, the critique has had an opposite effect. Until recently, they had only rented out via word-of-mouth method to friends and friends of friends, but as Airbnb came under attack, they promptly set up a profile on the site.
– Our leaders encouraged us to go on Airbnb in protest against the critique, and in order to show international tourists how beautiful it is here. The Boycott is something that the Palestinians have created in order to harm us settlers, says Benaya Zeev.
And of course Esh Kodesh is in Israel:
– The Jews came here well over 2,000 years ago. Ask even the Christians: Who did God give the Promised Land to? To us, the Jews.
In the description on Airbnb there is not a word of the very special security situation which applies in the West Bank, or concerning the outpost’s violent conflicts.
– We believe the security is good here. Our children run around freely in the daytime and play, says Benaya.
But from the living room, there is a view to a military watchtower, where Israeli soldiers keep watch over Esh Kodesh 24 hours – regardless that the settlement of the Israeli state is illegal.
And Benaya has himself told of an attack that morning on a nearby settlement.
As he comes with breakfast the next day, I notice a pistol under his jacket.
I ask, why he goes around with a pistol – if it’s so peaceful here?
– Just as a precaution, he says and quickly adds:
– And fortunately they have never succeeded in harming us.
But what about your Palestinian neighbors in the village Qusra? They accuse you of destroying their olive groves and burning their crops?
– They are lying, says Benaya dryly.
– We have never attacked Qusra.
West Bank settlement photo by Flemming Weiss Andersen for Danish Radio
In a field at the outskirts of Qusra a farmer, Nimr Saied, picks up a small olive tree which was cut at the root.
– The settlers from Esh Kodesh did this, he says.
– They came last Thursday around 3 PM. They managed to cut 38 trees by the time we discovered them.
According to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, the settlers of Esh Kodesh have destroyed 2,720 of Qusra’s olive trees since 2002. They have torched crops, cars and the village mosques, killed livestock and attacked farmers in the field.
The residents cannot go to the police, because Qusra is in area B, where the Palestinian authority is not allowed entry.
To go to the Israeli police is meaningless, says the head of Qusra’s local council, Abdel Azim, they never do anything anyway. And if the village itself takes action against the settlers, they would be attacked by the Israeli military.
– They can easily shoot at us from up there, says Abdel Azim, pointing at the watchtower at the outskirts of Esh Kodesh.
Last year, about half a million tourists visited the Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
Eight out of ten are Israelis, who come to see the biblical holiness, experience life in a settlement or just come to enjoy a weekend in pastoral surroundings, says Miri Maoz-Ovadia, spokesperson for the Benyamin Regional Council, which represents 42 settlements.
The last 20% are foreigners, primarily evangelical Christians from Europe, USA and growingly from Taiwan and South Korea.
Miri Maoz-Ovadia has invited us for a tour of the region in order to show us some of the area’s tourist attractions.
One of the locations is a winery at Psagot, about 15 km south of Esh Kodesh, which launched a new product in January: Five gift boxes with delicatessen from the Promised Land, which can be ordered online for delivery worldwide.
“Israel’s Blessings”, as the gift boxes are called, is a countermeasure to the many “malicious and unfair boycott movements and trade restrictions” against Israel, explains Psagot’s head of sales Noa Shlomay.
For example, EU’s decision from November, that all products from Jewish settlements should be labelled “made in the West Bank” and not Israel.
But for the settlers, the West Bank doesn’t exist.
– It’s called Judea and Samaria, says Noa Shlomay,
– And we are proud to mark our products “Made in Israel”. We are one nation, one country, one front.
She plays the sale-promotion video for “Israel’s Blessings” and presents us one of the boxes, “The Tree Blessing”, which is to “bring light, where there is darkness, and give people all over the world a possibility to show their support and love to Israel”.
Throughout the day we are presented the same, deeply rooted world-view: It is us who are the good and them who are the evil.
It is us who are the victims – of Palestinian terror, of the international community’s lack of understanding, for malicious and unfair boycotts and trade sanctions.
– They are shooting at us, says Vered Ben Saadon, as we attend a wine tasting at the Tura winery.
– It is therefore impossible to give them equal rights. We don’t want it to be so, but we have no choice.
And Miri Maoz-Ovadia adds:
– Their corrupt leaders encourage them directly to go out and kill us!
– We Israelis only want peace. We have always been ready to give and give and give. We are the only democracy in the Middle East, and our army is one of the most moral in the world, says Gayle Wohlgemuth, an agile, little woman in a sports outfit, whom we meet in the Dolev settlement, where she rents out two huts via Airbnb.
She does not understand how it could be a problem to write that the cottages are located in Israel.
– This is Israel. And besides, the Palestinians do not only want the West Bank, they want also Tel Aviv and Jaffa and all the rest of it. If we give them the West Bank, they’ll bomb Tel Aviv, and it will mean that there’s only five seconds to reach the safe-room, she says.
The Palestinian land doesn’t exist.
On the tourist map over Binyamin Region, which Miri Maoz-Ovadia has given us, the names of the Palestinian villages are written with hardly visible, grey letters, while Jewish settlements are clearly marked – even the illegal outposts such as Esh Kodesh.
But the village Qusra does not exist.
Since the beginning of October last year, the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians has further erupted with renewed strength. Until the end of March, about 200 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli police and military – most of them allegedly for committing attacks against Israelis.
In the same period Palestinians – typically young men, acting alone – killed 30 Israelis, most of them stabbed with kitchen knives, screwdrivers or whatever else the perpetrators could get their hand on.
And for the first time in five years, settlers have been attacked within a settlement itself.
Miri Maoz-Ovadia says that tourism has been almost halved due to the conflict.
– But we refuse to allow fear to control our lives, she says and explains that many settlers have taken up the challenge and set up profiles – not only on Airbnb, but also on Tripadvisor and various other platforms.
The campaign against Airbnb is dismissed by her as a peripheral problem.
– Of course you can’t boycott 4,000 years of bible history, she says.
– This here is after all the bible heroes’ land.
According to Omar Barghouti, [co]founder of the Palestinian Boycott movement BDS, Airbnb is making itself complicit in war crimes by permitting Jewish settlers on occupied West Bank to rent out rooms.
– According to international law the settlements are a war crime, and when one deals with the settlers, one legitimizes them and is thus complicit in their war crimes, says Omar Barghouti.
Since January, the BDS movement has been putting pressure on the global rental platform in attempt to get it to halt all cooperation with Israeli settlers.
If the rental giant does not bow to the pressure, BDS threatens to call for a full boycott – not only of Airbnb’s rental locations in the settlements, but globally.
Omar Barghouti believes a boycott will work because the BDS movement has gone after far bigger prey before – and won.
But if one reads the guest reviews on Airbnb most seem enthusiastic about their stay in a settlement.
– It struck me as surprising, that one had to pass through a checkpoint in order to arrive here, but there was no need to worry, writes Maria from Berlin.
And Ron from Amerongen in Holand writes:
– For them who wish to experience the sense of a genuine Samaria-community, this is the place. The village is not [sic] protected by a fence, but that’s how they live here, and then so can we?
As we depart from our hosting couple in Esh Kodesh, Benaya says:
– We learn to love people and bring light unto the world. The Arabs learn something totally different.
Inbal adds:
– I hope you will write something nice about us on Airbnb. We really want people from all around the world to come and live here for a few days. It is the best way to understand the truth about our beautiful land.
The Promised Land, which she is convinced was given to them by God.
It has not been possible to receive comment from Airbnb concerning the renters in the West Bank.
Source Article from http://mondoweiss.net/2016/06/around-pistol-peaceful/
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