'Neighbours' From Hell

In Israeli-occupied Hebron:

"Fahdi had a scarred face and a shortage of teeth. During one nocturnal incursion a conscript laid a hand on his wife's breast and when he struck out another soldier hit him on the left cheek with a rifle butt and he lost three teeth. Then the offender smote him on the right cheek and he lost two more. Between my first and second visits to this family stick-wielding settler children had left their seven-year-old son with a four-inch scar on his scalp. Fahdi's brother Abdul lived next door and his nine-year-old son had recently been attacked by a woman who dragged him into her trailer home, held him down in an armchair - knee on stomach - then forced a stone into his mouth and manipulated his jaw until two teeth were broken. The bruises on his face had not yet faded. As Fahdi said, 'You couldn't make it up.' Abdul's wife had suffered fractured fingers when a mob of women went on a rampage and she tried to shield her five-year-old daughter from their fists." (Between River & Sea: Encounters in Israel & Palestine, Dervla Murphy, 2015, pp 270-271)

Murphy's latest book is a must-read.