Thursday 4 April, at 7 am, my older brother rushed to my room with my parents. “The soldiers are surrounding the building,” he said, “and they’re on the second floor, they’re coming.” Before he finished speaking, we heard a really loud knock on the door. My mom and I put on our headscarves, which were right next to us, and my father and brother went to open the door before they broke it down.
As soon as my father opened the door for them, two soldiers pushed him forcefully against the wall and beat him. The others beat my two brothers, but my older brother was the most affected. They asked him about his name, checked his ID, and started beating him badly. They were so loud and aggressive. My mom and dad were saying, “We have a baby, she’s sleeping inside! We need to get her.” They kept saying: “Sit down, don’t move, don’t talk.” I went immediately to my mom and dad’s room and hugged my sister Misk, three-and-a-half years old, and went back. They yelled at me and asked me to sit. They were super aggressive, yelling in raised voices all the time. It all happened in a few minutes.
They began searching, vandalizing our home and tampering with our property. Then they asked all of us to leave the living room and go to the kitchen. My dad and younger brother went first, and they shoved them. Then my mom, Misk, and I followed, with a soldier observing us and standing at the door, preventing us from talking or moving. My older brother was shaking because he was nervous, wearing a t-shirt, and was very cold.
At this point, Misk started to wake up and realize what was happening around her. My mission was to make her think we were playing. I don’t want my little angel to have trauma at this age. She was confused about what was going to happen.
“Don’t worry, my baby,” I said, “we’re playing our game, police and thieves.”
“He is the police?” she said.
“Yes,” I replied, “and we are the thieves.”
“But I want to be a police” she said.
She turned her head toward the soldier and asked him to give her his gun.
“It’s not real,” I said. “It’s fake like the ones our brother buys to play games with.”
Then the soldier got angry and said, “Oskot,” – which means shut up – in bad Arabic and with an aggressive tone.
Silence. Misk doesn’t understand. Everyone is trying to understand what they want and how this will end, and what it will cost.
Misk started coughing, and my mom as well. I asked the soldier if I could get them water, but he refused and yelled again.
I don’t know how many of them were in the house, but more than 15 for sure. One of them came, aggressively took my brother, beat him.
After a few minutes we heard a soldier interrogating him.
“איפו הנשק ,איפו הנשק”
My brother kept answering, “I don’t know Hebrew, speak with me in Arabic.” Then they hit him.
“Wein el-slah?” – where’s the gun?
My brother was so confused. “Which gun?” he answered. “I don’t have any.”
“Yes, you have”, said the soldier. “Where is it?”
“We’re too poor to buy a gun”, said my brother, “we don’t have one.”
Then they started to beat him again.
They asked us to go back to the living room.
After an hour of searching, a policeman came. He was the only one who spoke Arabic. “If you have money or gold, take them”, he said. “We want to search.”
“All of this ruin, and you still want to search?” asked my mom.
“Yes,” he replied. “We still didn’t find what we need.”
My brother joined us in the living room. I took off my jacket and gave it to him; he was shaking.
Misk was asking a lot of questions that I didn’t have any answers for. “What are they doing? Why did they take our brother? Can I play with them? Where’s my gun game?”
Then she started saying, “I want to go to the bathroom!” It was the worst timing. What could we do? I asked the soldier, and he refused aggressively. I asked Misk to wait.
The army officer came to my dad. “Do you have another house?” he said.
“Not even this house is ours”, my dad answered. “We rent it.”
“Ok, but I will bring a bulldozer and demolish this wall, then demolish all your house.”
“Why? What did we do?”
“Ask your son, don’t ask me. Yallah, go and sit.”
They kept beating my older brother and asking about the gun. They took a piece of fabric with Quranic verses written on it that was hung on the wall and used it to blindfold him.
After two hours – detaining us, destroying the whole home – they took my brother and left.
“They took him?” my mom asked.
“Yes” said my dad.
“He will be back one day,” I said. “Don’t worry.”
My mother broke down crying. They took her son. And we know what people face in prison.
“At least he’s alive,” I said, “and he will be back one day.”
My mom was in a terrible state. I tried to gather all his information and an ID photo so that I could contact the District Coordination Office, or anyone who could help us to at least find out where he was taken.
The neighbours started to gather, helping, and standing with us.
After one-and-a-half hours, we heard from someone that they had released him and he was at his friend’s house. They had taken him there. “He told us everything,” they said, “give us the gun.” He replied: “I don’t have anything.” They destroyed his home, brought in a search dog, scared his wife, and forced her to open her husband’s shop.
After investigating both of them, finding nothing, and checking their phones, they released them. My brother came home and we hugged him. That was the worst four hours of my life. I was just thinking about the people who haven’t seen their relatives and loved ones for years.
The house was in a terrible condition. They didn’t leave anything in its place; everything was destroyed, fallen. My mom, the woman who spends hours and hours keeping this house clean and safe for us, her children, won’t let us enter the house while wearing our shoes. Still, these Zionists stormed the house and violated its privacy, trampling the ground with their boots stained with depravity, vileness, and the blood of my people.
My dad – our strong man, the one we go to when we feel scared and need safety – couldn’t protect even himself from their guns and all their military equipment.
My brother – who until this day still suffers and feels every blow to his body – was accused of having a gun and beaten so badly.
My little baby, Misk, what did she do to face this at such an age? Why was she denied the ability to talk, move, play, or even go to the bathroom? To see her brother beaten and her mother crying? To see her whole home turned into a big mess?
They scared me, not because I’m scared of them – I have faced them a lot and don’t really care what happens to me – but I was scared for my family, the people I love and belong to. The soldiers can hurt them, and who can stop them? Who can question them? They did what they did and found nothing. Who cares?
They stole our money, our safety, yelled at us in a language we don’t understand. They even stole the morning breakfast I was planning to have with my family on my day off, the day off I wait the whole week to spend with them. Instead, we spent it cleaning and organizing, and receiving people who came to ask about what happened.
And when anyone comes to ask my mom and dad about what happened, they say: “Alhamdulillah, nothing. Our son is out of prison. Nothing else matters.”
Nothing! All of that, and you’re still grateful that they didn’t arrest him?
This is something I have heard not just from my own family, but from too many Palestinians. We’re always expecting extreme violence, and when it doesn’t happen, we’re glad and ignore what did happen. Is it our survival mode? Do we always just expect the worst?
We don’t live in H2, the area under Israeli control. We have nothing, and we did nothing. But did that stop them? No. Nothing. I feel like we don’t have even one square metre of safety. We are targeted all the time, everywhere. What happened to my family is one small story from all the violence and oppression we face every day. And people still say “Alhamdulillah.”
What more can they do to us?
My mom said something that hit me, and I will never forget it:
“Everyone, without exception, is covered in kerosene, and the fire will reach us all.”
