A brief audience with David Wilder – Spokesman for the Jewish Community of Hebron

I went with B’tselem, an Israeli human rights organisation, recently to Hebron and we were hosted for half an hour by David Wilder, a spokesperson for the settler community there. There was an opportunity for questions and answers which I have transcribed so as to give an insight into the Zionist thinking of the settler community in the only place in the occupied West Bank where settlers are living right in the centre of a Palestinian city. The recording was bad quality so I have transcribed what I heard but there were a few words I wasn't able to decipher, so a few words here and there may not be completely accurate.

David Wilder's introduction to the Q&A:
Jews have been living here for literally hundreds of thousands of years and there have been massacres, they’ve been expelled but it doesn’t mean that Jews can’t continue to live in Hebron. In 1947, we didn’t occupy, we came back home. And that shouldn’t have been in vain, and because they were murdered in 1929 that shouldn’t mean that Jews can’t live in Hebron. The Jews and everybody else wants access to the tomb of the Patriarchs to be able to pray there. It’s considered to be the second holiest site in the world for Jewish people so we believe that anyone in the world that wants to identify with that site and go there to pray should have the right to do that. Of course any Jew should have the right to worship there, a right that has been taken from us for several hundreds of years.

Do you think, as you have the right to return here, that Palestinians should have the right to return to Israel and if you don’t based on a biblical belief, do you think that everyone should be treated equally within the land of Israel?
In terms of whether Arabs should be able to return to villages or whatever one has to keep something in mind, which people generally have a problem with, that is there is a price to war. On Nov 29 1947 the UN declared a partition plan and pre state Israeli leadership accepted that then and the Arabs rejected it and declared war on us. On May 14 1948 when the state was declared, that war continued and we were invaded by Arab bombings from all sides. There is a price to that – the Arabs, it’s been historically proven, documented that the Arabs were told to leave their homes in most cases, not all, but mostly because the Arab bombings would be able to clean up the Jewish remains that were still here because their goal at that point was to basically delete whatever was left of Israel from the map. And they did leave, and afterwards of course they lost their homes because Israel won the war. But do they have the right to go back? No I don’t believe they do.

Should people be treated equally? Yes, ok, I believe that everybody and anybody should have the right to education, health, to welfare and whatever else people need to be able to live, there’s no reason why not. Of course there are certain conditions, people that you’re trying to give to, don’t give you back bullets and bombs and rockets. If you’re trying to give something to somebody as a gift then you turn and punch me in the nose, then I’m going to be very wary of giving you another gift and unfortunately that’s what happens. We have that experience when we give, what we’ve given, I’ll just use the example of Gaza, what we gave them - we gave them all of Gaza - we got back in a thousand rockets.

To put some of your comments in context, what is your feeling about Operation Cast Led particularly the use of white phosphorous against hospitals for example?
You’re talking about Gaza? Listen, again, there is a price to war, ok. Israel was attacked for years and did nothing. I think that was wrong. I think if Israel had hit back a lot earlier we could have hit back without the force that we used during the last war, during the last military incident that we had. But we didn’t, unfortunately. I think it would have been a lot less painful for both sides if Israel had hit back earlier. So people have to understand that there’s a price. There are many people who say, about the number of Israelis killed during what’s called the second intifada [he calls it something else] and how many Arabs were killed. It’s pretty clear Arafat, instead of accepting Barak’s proposals at Camp David... [person who asked the question says he didn’t ask him that – Wilder replies that it’s the same thing]. Look, I can only try to take partial responsibility for the things that I deal with, I don’t make decisions for the Israeli army, or for the Israeli military, the Secretary of Defence, the Prime Minister... I feel, I trust they do whatever they have to do in order to protect the state of Israel and I’m trying to do the same.

Did you or any members of your immediate family serve in the Israeli army in a combat capacity?
Yes. I wasn’t in a combat capacity, my profile didn’t let me. I have a son who served in a combat unit, and a son who is presently serving in a combat unit in Hebron.

What do you see as the future here, the next couple of years, the next twenty or thirty years here in Hebron?
I’ll answer you honestly. My experience has taught me – I’ve been doing this for a long time - that it’s very dangerous to make predictions. Things change so rapidly and there are so many different factors involved, that to try and make an accurate prediction is impossible. If you’d asked me in 1990, whether something like Gaza could have happened, I would have said no. If you’d have asked me after Netanyahu was elected do I think that he’s going to give a percentage of Hebron to Arabs [not certain he said to Arabs – recording not very clear], I would have said no. It goes in both directions. I can tell you what I’d hope for, what I’d like to see, I don’t know what’s going to be here tomorrow, and I say that from a personal point of view and a more general point of view. Just giving you an example, when I think about me, or my family, or anyone that lives in Hebron, where am I going to be tomorrow, then I get classified information from the military here that they that they found a live and let testament of some Arab militia who said he was going to finish himself off and before that he was going to go attack some Jews in Hebron. I don’t know what’s going to happen I have no idea. What I’d like to happen, look, there’s a general impression that people like us are against peace. It’s not true, everyone wants peace. I don’t like the fact that I’ve got a son who’s wondering around in Jenin with weapons and they’re gonna shoot him and he’s gonna shoot back at them. But I believe in survival, I believe in survival first of all of the Jewish people and the State of Israel. If there could be found some idyllique way that everybody should hold it together and live happily ever after, that would be wonderful. Do I see that happening in the future? No unfortunately I don’t.

If Israel loses the next war and all the Jews were kicked out of Israel, would that be the price of war as well?
I certainly hope there isn’t another war and I certainly hope we don’t lose it and I don’t see the Jews getting kicked out. Wars of that magnitude, we’re dealing with things like the Iranian nuclear threat and what happens if Israel gets hit by a nuclear bomb and of course we basically couldn’t survive that. Is that a price of war? Of course it’s a price of war. When I talked about the price of war, I’m mostly talking about when a country or a people or whatever also initiate a war. Of course when you fight back there’s a price and everyone in Israel knows that when people go to war, there are people that don’t come back. And no one’s looking for that. Is that the price? Yes. It is worth the price? If you’re dealing with the survival of the Jewish people and the state of Israel, then we have no choice. Today, the scope of the war – what I believe is still a war of independence here, is to destroy the state of Israel, ie the Jewish presence in Israel. Today, there is a military effort being made to destroy the state of Israel, a concerted effort made to delete the state of Israel as a Jewish state, from the map. The factors that do that – Ahmadinejad bombing Israel, to destroy Israel, the fact that there are going to be Arabs killed too, he doesn’t care about that. He’s not gonna point his bombs, like in Egypt, when the Egyptians refused, he’s not gonna be able to do that with his bombs, but he doesn’t care about that. He’s willing to – I can’t say I know this for fact, but I do recall having read that the reason why Anwar Sadat decided to make peace with Israel was because he realised he could wipe Israel out and it would cost him a half a million people and was too high a price to pay. He was willing to pay a high price, but that was too high. Ahmadinejad doesn’t care how many Arabs he kills, he’s willing to destroy the Jewish state, and employ his staff to go into the next stage, which I won’t have time to talk about now...

Given that you support the continuation of the state of Israel, if the state of Israel and other countries agreed on a two state solution, and that settlers were asked to leave Hebron, would you agree to leave?
No [without hesitation]. Let’s put it this way. There are a lot of hypothetical possibilities to be dealt with. If I try to make plans for everything that might happen I wouldn’t have time to do anything else. And probably none of them would happen. We don’t have any plans to leave here, this is our home. Ask me what happens if... they send in a hundred thousand troops to help carry us out... Do I think people are fighting with weapons against the Israeli army at the moment, no. Can I guarantee everyone no I can’t, I don’t have control of everybody, I try to keep control of myself, I try to keep control of my family. The experience shows in the past 20/30 years that the state of Israel has started throwing people out of their homes because they have opened fire on Israeli soldiers. If they bring a hundred thousand people to carry us out there’s not a lot we can do. We can come back. Do people have any intentions of leaving? No. What we believe to be the state of Israel... Look, this question is dealing with something I have no control over, what I do have to say to the Defence Minister, and we do express ourselves, is that it’s obvious that there’s disagreement, it’s also something that’s widely accepted throughout the entire world, something that’s called civil disobedience. In the States, in states across the world, there are times when their civil disobedience is much much much more than anything we face in Israel. If someone’s gonna say to me ‘look we want to throw you out of your house’ and I say I’m not ready to leave, you know, if you want me out of here you’re going to have to pick me up and throw me out...

It seems like you’ve failed at representing your agenda at least in the majority of Israel and the majority population of the world. You seem radical, extremist, not moderate. So I wonder where you’ve failed? You feel that this story, not all Israelis see what you see, so where did you go wrong?
Look, success and failure are very relative. If you’re asking me, do I think we’ve failed? No, I don’t think we’ve failed. The fact that I live here today, as far as I’m concerned is a success. The fact that there are things we haven’t succeeded to do, there are ups and there are downs, we’ve been exiled from Israel for the last 2000 years, Hebron for the last 700 years. It’s very difficult to get everything. There are problems and there are issues we have to deal with, sometimes you’re able to achieve what you want, sometimes it takes long to achieve what you want. I think that most of the goals you’re trying to achieve, you eventually will achieve. I don’t believe that God brought us back after 2000 years to throw us out again. I know it sounds weird but I think our presence today in Israel everywhere – in Hebron, in Tel Aviv, in Haifa or Be’er Sheba is a miracle, it’s also a miracle, because if anybody here had been behind the fences in Auschwitz in 1944 and someone came and poked you on the shoulder and on one side there’s chimneys and smoke and the other side of that there’s fences, and somebody says ‘you know something, don’t worry about it, everything’s going to be ok, in another 40 years we’re going to have a Jewish state and there are going to be people that come and invade us, and we’re going to win’, then the guy would look at you and say ‘you’re nuts, you’re out of your mind, you need to wake up! This is the fence and we can’t get out and there’s the smoke and that’s it’. And we’re here today. And if that’s not a miracle, nothing is. 1967 was a miracle, 1973 was a larger miracle and – I don’t have time now – but I can give you miracles that happen here in Hebron one after the other after the other. You know, it’s tangible, you can touch it. Do I think that we have problems? Of course we have problems. There are things we haven’t succeeded, we haven’t succeeded perhaps in explaining ourselves well enough. But in order to be able to express yourself you have to have a form in which to express yourself. We know where the media is, the Israeli media and the world media and that’s one of the ways I ask you also... And I do thank you very much for this opportunity because in most cases groups like this that come in aren’t interested in even hearing what the other side have to say and I think it’s very praiseworthy that despite differences of opinion that are huge there’s a willingness at least to allow people to hear a little bit of another side and I think that’s important and significant and so I thank you for that. But do I think I’ve failed. It’s difficult but whether I call that failure, no.