Americans Are Flying to Israel to Displace Palestinians

Fatima Salem, a 70-year-old Palestinian woman, stands in front of a group of Americans who are building a fence around the yard outside her house.

“I want to enter my home,” she says.

The dwelling in front of her houses 11 family members and three generations. It’s the place where Salem was born and it’s the place where her parents grew old and passed away. It’s also the place where she raised her children. Salem’s granddaughter, also named Fatima, plays in the yard outside the house. Little Fatima is wearing a red tracksuit and staring in silence at the strangers who have invaded her space.

Salem and her family live in Sheikh Jarrah, a Palestinian neighborhood in occupied East Jerusalem that was occupied by Israel in 1967. It’s against international law to push Palestinians out of this area, but that hasn’t stopped settlers – nationalist Jewish groups that believe in a divine right to this land – from trying.

But the Americans – hired by Chaim Silberstein, the head of a U.S.-registered charity – are here to claim this land as their own.

“It’s a parking lot that belongs to us,” says a young man wearing black glasses and a gray T-shirt with the word Boston emblazoned on it in blue.

Fatima’s entire family comes outside, and pleads for the group to leave. Instead, a Virginia rabbi named Ben Packer screams at them repeatedly, “No, no, no!”

The effort to displace the Salems has been decades in the making. And it’s happening because of a law that allows settlers to argue that Jewish residents used to live on this property. Palestinians don’t have the same right to reclaim property that once belonged to them.

An Israeli bystander approaches the Americans building the fence and asks, “Why are you doing this? Understand what you are doing.”

“We got a basic idea,” says a young man with a Texan drawl. He’s wearing neon orange gloves as he separates wiring from the bunched-up fence being rolled out in front of the Salem family.

Little Fatima carries a chair over her head. The Salems have decided to use one of the last forms of resistance they have left: their bodies. They set up tables and chairs in the yard. They’re now almost completely surrounded by the fence.

“I will not leave my home. Even if they come here and kick me out. I’ll climb over the door and come back in. I swear. They’ll kill me here before I’ll leave,” the elder Fatima later tells us.

While it’s the Israeli government and military that enforce Palestinian displacement, it’s settler groups that work behind the scenes to make it happen.

After months of reporting, my team and I found a network of Israeli settlers tied to charity donations from abroad – and Americans themselves – that are connected to efforts to displace this family.

In a new documentary for AJ+, we explore the links between the settler movement in Israel, charitable giving in the U.S. and the people who are participating in it.

Watch it now on YouTube.