In November 2025, I joined international and Israeli activists in the Palestinian community of Masafer Yatta, a rural area in the South Hebron Hills. There and in other communities across the West Bank, Palestinians have responded to attacks from settlers and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) by inviting volunteers to stay in their homes, help plow their fields, and accompany them in their daily lives.

As Israeli violence in the West Bank has escalated alongside the Gaza genocide, there has been an influx of volunteers like me joining in a practice commonly known as “protective presence,” or more recently, “solidarity presence.” My time in Masafer Yatta was spent with a loose collective of Jewish activists in Palestine whose work can be found online under the moniker Kivsa Shchora, Hebrew for “black sheep.” I paid close attention as they spoke with particular venom about the most violent settlers harassing the Palestinian communities there.

On our drive from the activist flat in At-Tuwani to the village of Az Zuweidin, where we had been called due to settler activity, an Israeli veteran of the solidarity movement told us about one notorious settler-terrorist we should be especially wary of: Shimon Atiya. In 2022, Atiya founded the illegal outpost Havat Shorashim between Az Zuweidin and the village of Umm al-Khair. In the past two years alone, he has shot a Palestinian resident in the leg, led an attack on Umm al-Khair that hospitalized six women and children, and run over a village dog with his vehicle. We stayed in Az Zuweidin for half the day watching and filming Atiya and his gang of youth shepherds construct a makeshift sheep pen from supplies stolen from a shed at the edge of the village. There was little we could do; when Magav (Israel Border Police) arrived, it was only to photograph our passports and manhandle us for filming.