I was brutalized by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank. It was only a fraction of what Palestinians experience every day.

Editor’s note: the following Op-Ed was written by an ISM volunteer who requested anonymity in order to continue engaging in direct action and the documentation of human rights violations without retribution.

In mid-August, I, along with another international activist, was beaten and robbed by armed Israeli soldiers in the rural village of Ibziq. The assault gave us only a faint, yet utterly incommensurate, glimpse of the imminent danger that Palestinians experience every day.

We were stationed in the area as part of a protective presence team affiliated with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). ISM’s work involves taking direct action to document and deter attacks, demolitions, and settler raids on Palestinian communities across the West Bank. 

At around 8 p.m. that night, at least eight Israeli soldiers in dune-buggy-style military vehicles invaded Ibziq. They wore army helmets, balaclavas, body armor, full combat uniforms, and had laser-sighted assault rifles slung across their chests. 

For over an hour, reservists patrolled, trespassed onto school grounds, tampered with waterlines, blocked entry roads, and threatened to raze the village. Such intrusions are frequent. Eventually, they forced their way into a Palestinian family’s home.

I and my ISM partner immediately approached with our hands raised to show we were unarmed. We asserted that the soldiers were illegally encroaching on Palestinian land and that their threats contravened international law. The response was swift and brutal. 

My partner was dragged to the ground, punched, and had sand kicked into their eyes and mouth. When I tried to intervene and film, multiple soldiers chambered live rounds and trained their rifles on me. 

Laser dots traced my head, chest, and stomach before finally settling steadily on my groin. This type of targeting and attempted genital mutilation has become a widespread practice amongst the Israeli military.

I was forced to my knees at gunpoint and told I would be shot if I did not comply. After being shoved to my stomach, two officers wrenched my arm behind my back, stole my phone, and elbowed me in the back of my head. 

When staring down the barrel of a gun, the choice I made as a professor — inspired by the courage of the student encampments to do something beyond writing critically and teaching about decolonization in the relatively safe confines of a complicit UK university — suddenly became startlingly real. 

When leaving, the soldiers shouted at Palestinians that Ibziq would be set ablaze. “They threatened to burn us alive,” one family member recalled. I and the other volunteer were taken by a Red Crescent ambulance and treated in the hospital. 

In principle, protective presence is straightforward. ISM volunteers literally walk alongside Palestinians who are under threat and record human rights violations. We also try — if only briefly — to interrupt the violence of colonial occupation. 

Protective presence is an admittedly limited but tangible and personal way to practice international solidarity without saviorism. Markedly, it does the necessary relational work of letting Palestinians know they are not alone. 

Notably, while international volunteers face real risks and occasionally pay with our lives, Palestinians endure ruthless violence and terror at the hands of the Zionist movement on a day-to-day basis — with far greater cruelty and far higher costs.

 Israeli apartheid, state-sanctioned terror, and settler violence

Recently, in Masafer Yatta, Palestinian activist and educator Awdah Hathaleen was murdered in broad daylight by an internationally sanctioned settler. Awdah’s life was cut short by the Israeli apartheid regime’s organized campaign of eradication. 

Similarly, one year ago, 26-year-old Ayşenur Eygi, a fellow ISM activist who stood with Palestine, was fatally shot in the head by an Israeli sniper after a peaceful demonstration in Beita. To this day, justice has been done for neither. 

Such killings reveal the true face of the Zionist settler colonial movement: it eliminates anyone who stands in the way of annexation. Indeed, the land grabs and blood being spilled today are an extension of the same Nakba that has besieged Palestinians for generations.

While the armed soldiers in Ibziq initially appeared to be a settler militia, it is critical to note that they were an informal part of the Israeli military apparatus — that is, they were armed, equipped, and authorized by the Israeli state to harass and terrorize Palestinians into fleeing, even though they are nominally “civilians.” 

The uniforms, the weapons, the vehicles, the arrogance, the impunity, the racist dehumanization — none of it exists without being sanctioned by Israel’s apartheid regime. 

The blurred line between an official soldier, an army reservist, and a settler militia is intentional. The Israeli government often relies on hostile Zionist paramilitary squads to do the dirty work of ethnic cleansing via belligerent harassment and constant intimidation until formal expulsions can be executed.

Two days after the assault in Ibziq, another Palestinian family was ambushed while asleep in al-Farisiya. At 3 a.m., 10 masked settlers silently stalked down a hill. They pepper-sprayed the eldest son, looped a chain around his neck, and attacked him with a knife. 

As the son gasped for air, the family woke to armed intruders ransacking the home. They chased the lynch mob away, but not before their son’s leg was slashed open. A month before, the same family received an eviction order and had dozens of sheep stolen by settlers. 

Less than a week after, in Ein al-Hilweh, families who lived in the village for over sixty years saw their homes obliterated in the early hours of the morning. Despite a court order delaying demolition until next month, the Israeli military escorted the removal team and bulldozers.

Israeli operators smashed houses along with water tanks and solar panels — vital infrastructure in an arid region where the occupation already makes water and electricity nearly impossible to access. It is a calculated plan to make conditions unlivable.

The violence of apartheid across the West Bank extends beyond physical beatings, home demolitions, and resource theft. It is psychological, emotional, and cumulative, as Palestinian families live with the perpetual dread of arson, abuse, and the wholesale destruction of their villages, livelihood strategies, and histories.

Families go to sleep unsure whether they will wake to settlers storming their homes with chains, knives, and guns. Children grow up with panic in their eyes and fear in their hearts. Their nervous systems are chronically debilitated by anxieties owed to floodlights, firing zones, surveillance drones, and death threats. 

For generations, Palestinians across the West Bank have withstood innumerable atrocities and expulsions. Since the onset of the Gaza genocide, this onslaught has only intensified. 

Every time a village is levelled or a Palestinian is murdered in cold blood, the “international community” looks away as if Palestinian suffering and death are unfortunate side effects of a “conflict” between two equivalent sides — rather than the result of the Zionist movement’s attempted conquest of Palestine.

This author is an ISM volunteer and professor of emancipatory politics engaged in direct action and the documentation of human rights violations across occupied Palestine. Based in L8-Toxteth, Liverpool, they can be reached at lesdamnes@pm.me