“Not All Israelis Are Like the Hilltop Youth”

12/11/25

On Friday, November 7, 2025, more than 50 Zazim activists arrived together with Rabbis for Human Rights to support the olive harvest of the Palestinian communities in the village of Nahalin. Our community joins the harvest every year, but this time the experience was profoundly disturbing — we saw firsthand how Palestinian farmers and residents in the West Bank are exposed to settler violence, backed by the army and the government.

And we also saw just how necessary our solidarity is. As Salem Najajreh, the owner of one of the plots we harvested, told us:

Because of our protective presence on the ground, the villagers gained access to dozens of olive trees that the army had blocked for years, and we even managed to harvest a large vineyard that had been closed off by the army since October 7, 2023.

In the midst of such a difficult period, our presence — Israelis and Palestinians standing shoulder to shoulder — was a clear, living statement of hope for a shared future and of civilian resistance in the face of an increasingly violent reality.