On March 7, 2023, I was walking with another international activist near Tuba village in Masafer Yatta, a group of villages at the southernmost end of the West Bank, when we were set upon by Israeli settlers from the nearby illegal outpost of Havat Ma’on. One settler chased my companion, wielding an iron bar, and another struck me from behind with a large stick, knocking me out, fracturing my skull and causing a bleed in my brain.
As a U.S. citizen with supporters here at home, I was able to get the State Department and Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., to press my case with Israel. As a result, the settler who hit me was arrested and charged with assault — though the odds of him being convicted or suffering more than a slap on the wrist are slim.
For Palestinians living in Masafer Yatta, such attacks are an almost-daily occurrence. Recently, Israeli airstrikes on Gaza have killed 34 Palestinians — including at least 13 civilians, seven of whom were children — and injured another 147 between May 9 and 13. But amid the destruction, a small crack has appeared in the United States’s decades-long commitment to funding the Israeli occupation of Palestinian areas and we should be doing all we can to widen it.
