Ezra Nawi

Nawi was born in Jerusalem,[3][13] one of five siblings, to a Mizrahi Jewish Iraqi family originally from Basra, which had made aliyah from Kurdistan shortly before his birth.[3][7][lower-alpha 6][lower-alpha 7] His mother gave birth to him when she was 14 years old. He was raised by a grandmother who spoke to him in Iraqi Arabic, an accent he still retains.[14] When Nawi was a teenager, they lived next door to Reuven Kaminer, a leading figure in Israel's Communist Party, and Kaminer, he has reminisced, influenced his activism.[3] As a conscript in the IDF, he served in a combat engineering unit. After the 1973 Yom Kippur War, where his duties included laying mines along the Suez Canal, he went abroad, travelling widely in the US and Europe, spending some time in both the UK and Ireland.[15]

Nawi became a plumber by profession. He also adopted a lifestyle that is openly gay.[7][16] He developed an interest in human rights, which he says comes from his experience of "belonging to a despised minority",[3] after meeting Irish University lecturer David Norris and forming a relationship with him in Dublin when they met at Christmas in 1975. Nawi insisted on going home with Norris after meeting him at a party – it was mutual love at first sight – and Norris found his sterile home, replete with every modern commodity but where only eggs and tea were the staple, suddenly transformed as Nawi's spicy Middle Eastern cooking suffused his Edwardian home.[17] Nawi mulled the idea of emigrating to Ireland; Norris helped him buy a home in Ramot. Their partnership, predominantly a mariage blanc since the physical side ended after three years,[18] lasted 10 years, and ultimately broke up after Nawi refused to commit,[16][19] having in the meantime fallen in love with an Israeli athlete, with whom he lived for a decade. The three remained on the best of terms.[20] His interest in human rights developed further over several years while he shared his home in Jerusalem with a West Bank Palestinian, Fuad Mussa, who feared an honour killing because of his homosexuality. Nawi was subsequently convicted on charges of allowing his partner to live illegally with him in Israel.[3][19][21] The difficulties they encountered acquainted him with the hardships of Arab life, and, he says, this was a turning point that led him to embrace an activist role in the West Bank in the 1980s.[22] Friends and clients of Nawi's raised £30,000 to bail out his companion when Fuad was arrested after restrictions tightened during the Second Intifada. An appeal was made to the President of Israel, Moshe Katsav, for his release, and an ex-gratia permit was eventually given to them to allow the couple to reside together in Jerusalem. By then, however, the relationship had broken up.[21] Nawi had in the meantime joined the Jewish-Arab human rights organization Ta'ayush,[16] where his fluency in both Hebrew and Arabic allowed him to serve as a liaison between local Palestinians in the Hebron area and Israeli activists.[23] According to Amiel Vardi, a classics scholar of Hebrew University and co-founder of Ta'ayush, he has an instinctive sense of relations with Palestinians which other activists, many of them Jewish intellectuals, lack.[3][24][lower-alpha 8] He used surplus earnings from his plumbing trade to subsidize his activities, and was reputed to charge exorbitantly for his services in order to earn enough money to donate to the fallāḥīn.[25][26][lower-alpha 9]

According to Ian Buruma, his activism is more practical than political.[22] Nawi himself says of his work, "(T)his is not about ideology. It is about decency".[3] According to Max Blumenthal, he is widely revered by young activists as a guide and mentor in the West Bank.[27]

Nawi, one of several Israeli activists in the South Hebron hills[lower-alpha 10] but according to David Shulman, the "real hero" of the area,[28] is said to have adopted the distinctive cave-dwelling Bedouin resident in this zone,[29] Eighty to a hundred members of these families, of the Bedouin al-Hathalin clan,[30] refugees from Tel Arad in the aftermath of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, dwell at Umm al-Khair, a village south of Hebron, 30 metres from the Israeli settlement of Carmel, Har Hebron.[31] This is one of the many khirbehs of that area.[32] They eke out a rough livelihood pasturing their goats and sheep on rocky land purchased from its Palestinian owners in the early 1950s.[33] They are hardscrabble farmers of desolate hills where, according to Nawi, "nobody else would even try to grow anything," but where these Bedouin are often prevented from working the land.[3][lower-alpha 11][lower-alpha 12] His attachment to these people and their biblical way of life flowed, he says, from his first encounter with them. He thought their distinctive lifestyle was subject to an "existential danger" in the way their fields were burned, their grazing stock poisoned,[lower-alpha 13][lower-alpha 14] their wells poisoned, or demolished,[34] their aged beaten and their land expropriated.[21][lower-alpha 15] He has been assaulted by settlers while helping Palestinians harvest olives from their own olive groves.[35] Some, fearing for their lives, will not return to their fields unless Nawi accompanies them.[36] He sleeps overnight in their houses to deter IDF soldiers reportedly throwing rocks at dwellings after dark.[37] He is active in many of their encampments from Bi'r al-'Id to Susia and Umm al-Kheir.[38] His arrival on the scene when settlers attacked a Bedouin family near Twamin and stole 450 head of their sheep livestock, was sufficient, according to Rabbis for Human Rights, to cause the settlers to desist and retreat.[39]

Nawi and this small group of activists have been described as an "independent aid agency": "whatever cash went into their hands was immediately translated into solving the problems of the poorest of the land."[40] For the last decade he has set up summer day camps for Bedouin children, brought in projectors to show them films, and taken them on trips to Jericho where, for the first time in their life, they can have an opportunity to swim.[1][41] He has introduced computer technology in these communities,[25] installed solar panels[42] and electricity-generating windmills with the assistance of an Israeli engineer from COMET:ME for a Palestinian refugee camp.[43] He helps ambulances get through roadblocks and hands out cash to poor people.[44] He has organized Ta'ayush activities which involve escorting children to school and protecting them from settlers. After a Knesset committee grilled an IDF commander on the way children were being prevented from going to school, the IDF instituted armoured personnel carriers to accompany them. Such escorts however do not apply when summer camps are conducted, and, according to Nawi, a settler quipped that while the Geneva Convention guaranteed children the right to a schooling, it says nothing about their right to summer camp.[45]

His role has drawn scorn from both the military authorities, who have detained him on numerous occasions, and from local settlers who have previously assaulted him,[46] thrown rocks at his car at night, threatening to kill him when he intervenes[5][lower-alpha 16] and who have been suspected by the police of intending to assassinate him.[lower-alpha 17] He has complained of multiple forms of harassment, from repeated fines for petty traffic incidents where enforcement is otherwise loose,[47] to having his business audited and receiving a huge tax bill to, he suspects, having his phone monitored and being subject to vicious homophobic taunts.[3][24] Some brand him ironically as "the saviour of the Arabs" whose concern for "unfortunate" Arabs extends to assisting them when they are "stealing" what settlers consider to be state lands in the southern Hebron hills and Gush Etzion.[48]

Nawi said he does not to yield ground when settlers attack, claiming that, rather than running away as other Israeli volunteers do, he hits back. In a 2005 interview, he went on record as saying:-

The settlers have become used to seeing Israelis caving in and crumpling when they get beaten. I don't cave in. If anyone beats me, I strike him back. And I'm not exactly a pip-squeak.[1]

The Israeli academic David Shulman states that Nawi is non-violent and recalled in sworn testimony an incident that took place in Susya in 2005, where Nawi was subject to one such assault:-

"I have been through many difficult moments with him—attacks by settlers, in particular—and I have never seen him respond to violence with violence. On one occasion in Susia, in 2005, settlers broke a wooden pole over his head, and he stood his ground without hitting back. I was right beside him, and I saw it. I have witnessed such instances many times. He is committed to nonviolent protest in every fiber of his being".[1][2][lower-alpha 18][lower-alpha 19]

In opposing such settler actions, which he says "serve the state's interests,"[49] Nawi is on record as saying that, "I'm here to change reality.. The only Israelis these people know are settlers and soldiers. Through me they know a different Israeli",[3] and states his conviction that their acts "are destroying Israel. We (Israelis) have to live side by side with the Palestinians as good neighbours, not as conquerors".[lower-alpha 20] Mere presence can be, he maintains, a deterrence.[21]

In one particular episode in January 2003, captured by Shulman's eyewitness account in his book, Dark Hope (2007), armed settlers wearing skullcaps and tzitzit fringes, and hailing from a daughter settlement of Ma'on called Ma'on farm (Havat Ma'on), charged down on Twaneh peasants sowing their traditional fields while Nawi was present. As shots were fired their way and stones rained down on the sowers, Shulman got the impression Nawi seemed to relish the moment, as he rallied those about him with the cry, "Don't be afraid. Stand your ground".[50] Joseph Dana expresses a similar view. In an incident at the village of Safa, in the face of tear-gas and live ammunition, Nawi's reaction to Dana's anxiety was to smile, slap him on the back and quip: "quite an adventure you are experiencing!" His approach, Dana concluded, cuts the tension in the air.[23]

Shulman has recently argued that he is one of three exponents of Gandhi's principle of satyagraha in the West Bank, alongside Abdallah Abu Rahmah and Ali Abu Awwad, with the difference that Nawi is Jewish, and has probably, unlike the former two, never read a word of Gandhi's writings, but simply "reinvented Gandhian-style protest on his own.".[10] Nawi's activism, according to Amira Hass, has brought him to the verge of bankruptcy.[12]

In January 2016, hidden camera recordings of Nawi were broadcast by Ilana Dayan as part of the Uvda ("Fact") investigative series on Israel's Channel 2.[70] The report revealed Nawi bragging[12] he had passed on to the Palestinian National Security Forces the names of Palestinian land brokers willing to sell land to Jews. In the recording, Nawi relates how Palestinian property dealers mistook him for a Jew looking to purchase land,[71] and says, "Straight away I give their pictures and phone numbers to the Preventive Security Force. The Palestinian Authority catches them and kills them. But before it kills them, they get beat up a lot.".[71] No reports have confirmed that Nawi's actions brought about the execution of any Palestinians,[72] a practice which, according to Amira Hass, the PA has long abandoned.[12] Mahmoud Abbas said that the PA does not execute land vendors, but sentences them to hard labour.[73] Several unsolved murders in recent years have, however, been regarded as related to such sales.[71]

Itzik Goldway, a reserve sergeant in the IDF and decorated veteran of Operation Protective Edge, together with his girlfriend, Julia T.,[12] are right-wing activists from the Ad Kan ("(I've had it)Up to Here") NGO, an organization whose existence was unknown until the Uvda programme was broadcast.[12] They succeeded in befriending Nawi by infiltrating Ta'ayush.[74][75] With Nawi, they observed attacks on Palestinians by Jewish settlers.[12] They then made the tapes which Ad Kan passed on to Uvda. The quality of the video as an accurate piece of reportage has been questioned.[lower-alpha 24]

Nasser Nawaja, a Palestinian resident of Susya who has spent a lifetime defending his village from the threat of expulsion[72] and field researcher for the Israeli human rights NGO B'Tselem,[77] was also present in one of the putative operations,[75] in which the land broker purportedly tried to sell Nawi, an Israeli, land which belongs to Nawaja's own family.[77] Nawi said that he "feels like crap" for fingering these agents by deceptive means. Nawi reacted to the report's claim that he used measures of entrapment by stating that

The opposite is true. He came to me and presented himself as a land broker. Since I assumed he was sent to frame me and tarnish my name in the Palestinian community, I had no choice but to report the incident to the Palestinian Authority, lest I be deemed a land buyer. I regret that the report is part of the effort to sabotage my activities, and the activities of my friends alongside the Palestinians.[77]

The Palestinian penal code, adopting a principle from the previous Jordanian legal system,[74] imposes a sentence of capital punishment for anyone convicted of the sale of land to Israelis,[72] or, according to other sources, to Jews.[71] The law, defended by Palestinian officials as designed to prevent takeovers by settlers, has never been officially implemented.

Ad Kan, the day after the programme was telecast, filed a complaint with the Israeli police against Nawi and two other Ta'ayush activists, and against B'Tselem's Nasser Nawaja.[78] On 11 January 2016, Nawi was arrested at Ben Gurion airport, after purchasing a flight ticket, on the suspicion of being an accessory to manslaughter, of conspiring in attempted murder, of contacting a foreign agent, of transporting an individual in Israel without a permit, and of using drugs.[72][70][79] Subsequently, both Nasser Nawaja and a third activist Guy Butavia were arrested, denied a lawyer, with a gag order being placed on their cases as well. Butavia was released on 21 January, and Nawi remanded until 24 January.[70] The immediate release of Nawaja was ordered by a judge, for what his lawyer called a "false arrest", since Israel had no jurisdiction in the matter. The police transferred him to Ofer prison, in what B'Tselem called a contempt of the court ruling.[80] On 24 January a judge ordered Nawi's release to house arrest, and criticized the prosecution for failing to clarify the allegation that he was involved in the death of a Palestinian selling land. Nawi had tipped off relatives of a certain Abu Khalil that the latter was considering a land swap with an Israeli, Yonathan. His relatives would have been harmed by the sale. Some time afterwards, Abu Khalil died. The police failed to provide evidence on the cause of death.[68] An appeal by the police against the lower court decision ordering his release was rejected on 25 January by the Jerusalem Magistrate's Court.[81] According to his lawyer, Eitan Peleg, the police failed to determine whether the putative victim was dead or not.[82] On 28 January, Judge David Shaul Gabai Richter nullified the cause for the arrest of both Butavia and Nawi, stating there was nothing in the evidence to substantiate the police's central allegation. He rejected a police appeal that Nawi be banned from the West Bank. He added that the case was part of a political controversy in which one side attacked the other. It was not the court's function, he concluded, to bother with politics.[83] An appeal by police against the decision, which ruled that a ban infringed their freedom of occupation and expression, was heard on 31 January, and partially overturned Richter's ruling. The police requested that the two activists be barred from the West Bank for 2 months was partially accepted when judge Moshe Bar-Am ruled reasonable suspicions exist, and that they were to be denied entry to the West Bank for two weeks.[84]

Nawi's story has been recounted in two documentary films. In 2005, Canadian-Jewish filmmaker Elle Flanders made a documentary entitled Zero Degree of Separation, which intertwined the story of her family in Jerusalem, for whom Ezra Nawi once worked as a gardener, with the lives of two gay couples, one of which was Nawi and his companion.[87][88] In 2007, a further film about Nawi's life and work, "Citizen Nawi" (HaEzrach Nawi)[89][90] directed by Nissim Mossek and produced by Sharon Schaveet, premiered at the Jerusalem Film Festival, where it won a special jury mention.[91] The film documents the plight of the Bedouin,[92] the difficulties of Israeli-Palestinian relations, and the hardships of being gay. Made over five years on a shoe-string budget, it was judged a somewhat messy docu by Variety film critic Leslie Felperin, who thought its director "too in love with its subject to ask tough questions". Yet, he added, it managed "to expose both Israeli and Arab bigotry and has its heart in the right liberal place".[93] Raya Morag sees the film as basically about deep-seated Israeli homophobia and racism.[94] Dan DiLandro, reviewing for Educational Media Reviews, wrote that the film had a number of evident problems, technical and narrative, yet judged it "an important work that shed light on many of the area's conflicts and dynamics".[95] Michael Fox, writing for Jweekly, finds "Citizen Nawi" to be "a rough-hewn profile in courage that diligently tallies the cost of conscience", and writes of the "discomfiting power" of a "raw and occasionally wrenching film", which stirs a "certain cognitive dissonance" when one "sees Nawi threatened and insulted in the crudest terms by religious Jewish settlers and embraced as a trusted friend by a Palestinian family living in a tent". For Fox, as the film follows Nawi's travails with his lover, run-ins with the police, and battles with settlers, it suddenly jolts one out of the initial impression that Nawi's activism has liberal roots:-

"One just assumes that Nawi has always been a liberal, and that his treks to the West Bank reflect a longstanding empathy for the Palestinians. It comes as a shock when he remarks well into the film that he wasn't particularly aware of or concerned about their day-to-day hardships until he got involved with Fuad".[96]

Nawi's instincts, Fox concludes, are those of the humanist, and the director Mossek's gutsiest move was to have made "a film that doesn't aim to inspire us with platitudes but instead tries to shock us with the hard business of building a road to peace".[96]

Nawi's example has also influenced the Israeli film-maker Ra'anan Alexandrowicz.[97]

Nawi suffered his first stroke shortly after the release of the Uvda broadcast,[98] Close friends attributed it to the severe harassment he had experienced.[99]. He suffered a further stroke in the summer of 2020, and during his hospitalization doctors discovered he had a brain tumour. He had recurrent minor strokes later that year, in autumn. He died on 9 January 2021.[100] Shortly before his death, he remarked to his friend David Shulman, "I did something good with my life,"[99] and to Amirs Hass that,"I could have done much more."[101]

• List of peace activists