1.
It is doubtful whether the truth will ever come to light. It is doubtful whether we will ever know what really happened in the police chase after the teenagers' car in Samaria. But we already know the bottom line of this difficult incident. And the bottom line is: Ahuvia Sandak, the late.
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What name is that, Ahuvia? Did you roll it off your tongue this week too? Ahuvia. It's not easy to walk around the world with a name like that, it's mandatory, but from everything I've read and heard this week about 16 and a half years of life that ended in one terrible moment, it seems that Ahuvia was a good name for him and his name was good for him.
2.
And no, I am not an automatic follower of every hill boy. I hear many descriptions and praises of the great devotion of the hill boys to every inch of the land of Israel. Wonderful. The settlement of the land is an important commandment that is weighed against all the commandments. But the land of Israel was not bought with impudence, the land of Israel was not bought with provocations, and certainly not with violence.
Well, what do you want, they tell me, these are teenagers who are dealing with difficulties in life, do you know what each of them has been through? They are far superior to other teenagers their age who are walking around drunk and drugged on the streets of Tel Aviv!
True, I agree with you 100 percent. But still, that's no reason to talk about them in romantic terms. Not everyone there is the wall and tower of today, nor are they the Hanan Porats of the next generation. And in general, on a practical level, it seems that an official in the engineering and planning department of the Mateh Binyamin Regional Council or an accountant in the Amana movement, de facto colonize the Land of Israel much more than any unauthorized outpost.
3.
And after all the lack of enthusiasm and discomfort with the behavior of many of the hill boys, what happened this week in Samaria is a terrible oversight that must be examined at the highest levels. And the serious oversight is not just the way the police conducted the chase. Not even the fact that they hit the boys' car. Also, of course.
But the really big scandal is not this or that isolated incident but a much larger matter.
In the demonstrations that took place this week, both on the ground and online, many called for the prosecution of the "murdering police officers." Sorry, that's not true. They are not murderers. They did not come with the intention of murdering anyone. But even without the term "murder," there is an extremely serious matter here, with broad implications for hundreds of other teenagers, not just her lovers, a sweet memory to remember: the police's treatment of the youth of the hills in recent years.
After all, as far as the Yamer Shi police are concerned, they did what they were supposed to do in pursuit. That's their job. They have an enemy to defeat. I will pursue my enemies and catch them. And who is the enemy that needs to be pursued? Who poses a real threat to the residents of the State of Israel? Not the hundreds of stone throwers or Molotov cocktails a month, not the car robbers on the roads of Judea and Samaria who take drivers out of their vehicles and leave them on the side of the road in the dead of night, nor the many thieves of agricultural equipment and goods, but a handful of children, who are mostly caught for offenses that a hillbilly would be quick to follow: entering a closed military area, blocking a road, building an illegal shack.
I oppose all of these actions, of course, but I really don't think they justify all the resources invested in preventing them, let alone life-threatening pursuits.
4.
Wait, but the police claim they threw stones. Well, first of all, I'm not in a hurry to accept the police version. After all, the police are a party to the story. It's clear that they have an interest in discrediting the car's occupants as much as possible. But even if they say they threw stones, well, that's very serious, but still not a reason for a deadly chase.
Have you seen the picture from Hadassah Hospital, with the tough police officers standing alert on duty next to the beds of the wounded boys? That's the story. The quantity, the budgets, the manpower, the energies. You say: Okay, but there's nothing to be done, we have to fight Jewish terrorism, it's dangerous.
Well, first of all, thank God there is almost no Jewish terrorism. And even if there is a Jewish department in the Shin Bet, there is no Jewish terrorist.
And second and most important thing: When you divert all the budgets to obsessively treating a handful of not-truly-dangerous boys, it is at the expense of treating the truly dangerous enemy in Judea and Samaria, the Arab enemy. Let me put it this way: The police officers who chase and will chase hill boys like this are not murderers, but who knows how much loss of life and pain they are responsible for. Not just the lives of her loved ones, but the lives of all those murdered and the suffering of all those injured in the shootings, the stones and the Molotov cocktails, which were made possible because the Shi'ite district police were not there in the field to treat the murderous enemy, but were engaged in an obsessive pursuit of 16-year-olds who built a covered parking lot for their donkeys on some unapproved hill.
5.
It is very unfortunate that the demonstrations held this week against the conduct of the police also included a lot of violence by some of the demonstrators. This does not allow me and my ilk to take part in the protest, and it is a shame. Because we must not pass over the police's policy in silence. First of all, for the sake of the boys and girls of the hills. Yes, even those who do things that should not be done. The treatment they receive from the police is much greater than the sin. And this is before we even talk about the legal system, which is getting tougher on them in an unprecedented way. The law will punish the hill. As if we are not talking about minors, as if the way to solve the problem at its root is through persecution and prolonged imprisonment and not through rehabilitation.
Test yourself: Do you know any former hill boys? Well, what are they doing today? After all, they don't stay boys until they're thirty or forty. Most of them grow up, grow stronger, establish loyal homes in Israel, and become "productive citizens," as Pollard says.
In my personal encounters with quite a few Givot graduates, I discovered people who were sensitive, smart, and of course idealistic (and usually musical) above average. Gone was the arrogance, but the caring and dedication remained.
We must stop the abuse of the system. They don't really deserve it. It certainly doesn't deserve their dear parents, who mostly raised them to live a bourgeois and peaceful life. They have enough worries about the future of their teenage boy or girl, they don't need to add to that the fear that, God forbid, some police officer will kill - not murder, but the result is the same - their child in an "operational accident.".
6.
The Samaritan Hills also knew festive moments during this difficult week: Say welcome to the new Hill Girl.
Her name is Shulamit Livnat, and a few days ago, on her 91st birthday, she moved to live on the Porat Yosef hill near Alon Moreh. No, I didn't get the numbers wrong in print. Her age is not 19, but 91. And if her name sounds familiar to you, then yes, that's her, Shulamit Livnat, the legendary underground fighter and singer, mother of Limor Livnat, who after 60 years of living in Ramat Gan decided that her future lay elsewhere: the isolated hill, where her granddaughter Ora (daughter of her repentant son, Noam Livnat) lives with her husband Rabbi David Binyamin, the rabbi of the hill, and their six adorable children.
Do yourself a favor and check out the long article that aired this week on Kan 11 about this apartment move. Just don't forget to prepare a tissue.
9:30 minutes of documentation that has it all: a personal, family and national story. A story of transition between generations and connection between generations. And lots of sweetness, and self-humor ("Until you get tired of it, I'll be here all the time," she tells the grandchildren who welcome her. "Then stay here forever because we won't get tired of it," says one of the grandchildren, and the grandmother responds: "The question is what eternity is for me..."), and love, and respect for grandmother, and openness and a wonderful and not-so-obvious family harmony ("Do you keep Shabbat?" she is asked in the article. "No," she answers. "And how will that work out with the new house?" she is asked and immediately answers: "Oh, no problem, I will keep it").
If I were a documentary director, I would take a camera and run to the Porat Yosef hill to document in a full-length film Shulamit Livnat's new life (forever!) in the house her grandchildren built for her on the hill.
""You know," reporter Carmel Dangor tells Livnat at the end of the interview, "that the temporary name we gave to the article in an internal group is 'Shulamit Livnat - The Girl of the Hills.'" And Livnat, after a week in which the youth of the hills were so vilified, responds with a modest smile: "When I heard about it, I had a reaction: It's not appropriate. Because really, those who went to the hills, went to nothing, went to dirt, and I came to a ready-made house. So the title 'Shulamit Livnat - The Girl of the Hills' does not deserve me.".
• The column is published in the newspaper 'Bisheva''
