What motivates a Jewish Israeli activist to drive hours from home and put himself between violent settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank? Listen to one of our organizers and Solidarity Guard activists, Nati:
"People ask me why I travel 2 hours from my house, leave my family, leave my children, leave my comfortable living to the protective presence in the West Bank. And I do this because no one should live their life in fear. My name is Nati, I'm a teacher, a dad. I joined Standing Together 6 years ago because I thought things had to be changed in Israel. After the 7th of October, I decided that I couldn't stand on the sidelines anymore and I needed to fight for a better future for all of us. I became a full-time activist while working in a bilingual school in Sakhnin. But after a while, I decided that I needed to do even more than that. I started organizing the Northern Chapter of Standing Together 2 years ago. About a year ago, a friend of mine came to me and said a community near Jerusalem said that they needed help. They were being attacked almost on a daily basis by groups of settlers that built their settlement above their houses in the desert. They asked us from Standing Together to come and stand between the settlers and the families. At the beginning, we knew that we couldn't be there all the time, so we were there only on weekends. During the weekends, the violence came worse and we decided that we would be there from Thursday till Saturday night. And the settlers came also during the week. They knew we weren't there. Slowly, we built up our presence. We gathered more and more people. And about 6 months later, we were able to be there 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. Today, we're there. We're also three different communities in the area. Our future here together will not be built through violence, fear, and terror. Our future here will be built when ordinary people decide to take their fate into their hands and to build a better future for all the people in this country and in Palestine."
💬 Discussion
What motivates a Jewish Israeli activist to drive hours from home and put himself between violent settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank? Listen to one of our organizers and Solidarity Guard activists, Nati:
