Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1538990
3 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 31 AUGUST 2025 OPINION wars in the West Bank of which are cynical use of at- risk youth and farm animals. It is 2025 and I am trying to per- suade sheep not to trespass on a Bedouin family's property. These families need to be left to live, and these young men need urgent so- cial work interventions. Later in the evening, we got called to a different part of the village about another settler tres- passing on a property without his farm animals. It turned out to be a false alarm, but the elderly cou- ple invited us in for tea. We sat on the concrete veranda, drank sage tea and some of us smoked cigarettes given out by the man of the house. They've lived in this village since they got married 35 years ago. He works with the local Israeli kibbutz, and she told me about the medications she takes (the price you pay for admitting to being a doctor in a social sit- uation). They told us that they have Jewish friends, they know that there are good people and bad people and it isn't connected to ethnicity. They only want to be left alone. We're speaking a bizarre con- coction of Hebrew, Arabic and Maltese (which is close enough to Arabic to come in handy). More tea is offered. These people never wanted any trouble and you can see it in their eyes that they don't understand why this is happening to them. Practically, it's easier to destroy the anatomy of a community than it is to create it. A few teen- agers with behavioural disorders goaded on by an extremist Jew- ish supremacist political faction and who remain unobstructed by mainstream Israeli institutions manage this destruction with im- pressive success. It is not so easy to destroy the soul of a commu- nity. These Bedouin families have a strong soul. But here is what I saw—this Hilltop Youth settler movement is destroying the soul of Israeli society and the anato- my of the Palestinian society with equal voracity. It is Israel's prob- lem and we too pay the price for it—just that the price we pay is far more abstract, at least for the moment. It is our responsibility. They told us that they have Jewish friends, they know that there are good people and bad people and it isn't connected to ethnicity.