Update on My Hearing in the Settler Attack Case

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, November/December 2023, pp. 28-29

Special Report

By Cassandra Dixon

I ATTENDED THE SEPT. 6 hearing in the legal case against the Israeli settler who assaulted me in March 2023 in the Palestinian village of Tuba (see June/July 2023 Washington Report pp. 20-21), but the judge did not issue a verdict. The court scheduled another hearing for Nov. 2, during which the settler will testify. 

During the Sept. 6 hearing at the Israeli District Court in Be’er Sheva, both the prosecution and the lawyer for the settler questioned two of the doctors who cared for me after the assault. Lawyers for the settler refused to accept written hospital reports and documentation, and they insisted on questioning the doctors at length in an attempt to claim that the injury was not serious. It was not easy for these doctors to travel to the hearing in Be’er Sheva because many Palestinians do not have permits to travel to Israel. The doctors were given six-hour permits to enter, and told they would be arrested if they overstayed that time. They had to leave a car at the checkpoint and travel the remainder of the distance by taxi, at considerable expense. I am grateful to them for their wonderful care when I was injured and for their help in insisting on legal consequences for the settler. 

The lawyer for the settler also argued that the settler should be released from house arrest in the home of his grandparents. To my knowledge, he has not been. 

The hearing was held completely in Hebrew. Fairly early in the proceeding, the judge forced the human rights lawyer who was accompanying me to leave the room. As a result I know only what the doctors were able to tell me about their testimony and what the prosecutor told me during a few minutes of conversation after the day-long hearing. The U.S. consulate did not attend the hearing. I am trying to get a court transcript. 

Meanwhile in the area of Masafer Yatta, where the assault on me occurred last March, Palestinians continue to confront escalating attacks by settlers, backed up by Israeli soldiers. In one village that I visited last spring, Widade, the violence from settlers has been so relentless and terrifying in these past months that the largest of the village’s three extended family groups has been forced to flee, leaving their home and barns and the livelihood they built over generations. Their sheep have been sold now. Settlers have already arrived to destroy everything that remained, and there is now no hope of them returning to their land. 

The majority of legal complaints made by Palestinians to the Israeli police against settlers are dismissed before they reach the prosecution stage, and legal consequences for settlers involved in assaults on Palestinians are almost unheard of. 

At this time, in 2023, Palestinians are facing violent attacks by Israeli settlers at the rate of 2.8 per day in the occupied West Bank. This unrelenting pressure and violence is forcing families to flee and resulting in the depopulation of Palestinian villages. 

In addition to attacks on people, settlers continue to burn and slash olive trees; steal sheep and donkeys; vandalize homes, cars and personal belongings; and destroy water wells and crops. The Israeli military and police routinely back up the settlers and refuse to intervene to protect civilians. U.S. taxpayers send Israel $10.4 million per day ($3.8 billion per year) in aid, the majority of which is received by the military, so when these attacks occur, we own a piece of the violence. 

I hope that in response you will consider this chance to sponsor an olive tree, at a cost of $24 per tree, to be planted in the coming planting season .

For more information and to donate to the campaign, please visit <https://tiny.one/MadisonOliveGrove>.

Cassandra Dixon lives in Wisconsin Dells, WI, at a Mary House, which provides hospitality to low-income families visiting inmates at a nearby federal prison. She works as a residential carpenter in Madison, WI and has done accompaniment and solidarity work in Palestine as a volunteer for the past dozen years. 

(Advertisement)