CPT Stoning on Shuhada Street

Stoning on Shuhada Street
2006 July 31

A single soldier, and half a dozen settler boys, stood in front of the Beit Hadassah settlement. One of the smaller boys trotted over and spit on me. The soldier started to scold him. Before he could finish, the other boys began tossing stones at us. The soldier stopped in confusion. (I think his unit may have been new to Hebron.)

Twenty boys were hanging out along Shuhada Street, from the settlement down to the corner of the Israeli army base, a good 100 meters away. As we came to each group of boys, they joined in the stoning. Each successive group of boys seemed older, and to throw larger stones, and with greater force. I was able to pull down, or deflect, some of the stones. But some were getting through. Then a large stone, thrown with considerable force, struck the center of my knapsack. Had it been aimed one foot higher, it would likely have knocked me unconscious.

We turned down the side street toward the Beit Romano checkpoint. Most of the boys continued to follow and stone us. Art (Gish) began shouting “Stop it!” very loudly. Some seconds later, Jerry (Levin) began rushing towards the boys with his arms flapping. I decided to walk as close as I could to the settler cars parked along the street, hoping our assailants would hesitate for fear of hitting their own vehicles…

I finally wrote my mentor, Michael Nagler, a Gandhian scholar, an account of what happened, with this conclusion: “My primary concern arises from my understanding of how nonviolence works… Suffering accepted voluntarily ‘compels the (opponents’) reason to be free’ (Gandhi). But in the dark they could not see our faces very well, much less our pain.”

Professor Michael, as I call him, wrote back: “There’s an issue of ‘emergency’ here, ie, we’re high on the escalation curve or the ‘stage and scale’ curve. I suppose the ideal nonviolent way to have handled it would have been to have walked straight up to the boys and said something to them to show you had no fear (?) and understood their feelings and – again ideally – not tried to protect yourself. However, it’s an emergency, so there’s no guarantee that it would “work”. And yes, CPT should avoid getting into such emergencies if they can possibly help it.”

Well, Michael, that’s a pretty high ‘bar’. Thank you for your parenthetical question mark! Even Jesus, the night before his crucifixion, struggled. But I sense you are right – no fear is the ideal. I have been working on meditation, and my mantram. And I can see that the several confrontations I’ve had with threats and stones are part of my training. But I’m going to need many lifetimes for this struggle, and the wisdom to avoid walking into such emergencies.

None of us speaks Hebrew well enough to say that we have no fear or that we understand their feelings. What kind of sign or body language will communicate these things? Perhaps we should carry a handout, or a letter, in Hebrew that explains our intentions.

Several months later I discussed this incident with Rich Meyer (Palestine teams coordinator). He said, “That lone soldier probably thought about, and told his fellow soldiers about, what he saw. Many soldiers are changed by their experience of Hebron. Our suffering is one part of that process.”