Sam Holland

What happened today in Silwan in East Jerusalem is unbelievable. A family had their home unjustly condemned by the municipality. Hours before a scheduled discussion between the city prosecutor and the residents' attorney—an eleventh-hour meeting that might have spared thirteen families from losing everything—the bulldozers were already on their way to Silwan. The families woke to the sound of fists and steel at 4:30 a.m., police and city-hired contractors forcing their way through doors in the dark, ordering everyone out. There was shouting and chaos in the narrow stairwells as residents begged for time to collect their belongings. Instead, they were told: Take only your money and gold. The rest—clothes, photographs, children’s toys, lifetimes of furniture and mementos—was left behind. If that isn't bad enough, the evicted family was attacked, by individuals working for teh city as contractors. They threw stones at neighbors and physically assaulting a man who tried to protest. The police came to break it up but only arrested Arabs, of course. The building’s four stories, where thirteen families had tried for years to earn a permit and build a future, were reduced to rubble. Those who beat them as they lost everything went home happy while those who tried to defend them were arrested. An apartheid state.