While it seemed incomprehensible that muscular teenage men would beat an elderly woman, the 68-year-old grandmother said, they did—and they seemed to enjoy it.
Her interest in the Middle East started in the early 1960s, Hughes-Thompson said, when she worked for producer David Wolper on a script entitled “Nasser vs. Ben-Gurion.” As the situation worsened in Israel/Palestine this past spring, she decided to observe what was happening there as an International Solidarity Movement volunteer. She arrived in April, shortly after Israel’s new invasion of Palestinian cities. Within days, she was part of an international emergency team that rode in Palestinian ambulances.
“We were mainly in Nablus,” she recalled. “I saw people lying wounded in the streets. And I do know for a fact that the presence of us internationals discourages many Israeli soldiers from shooting the Palestinian ambulance crews.”
Hughes-Thompson said she was inspired by the bravery and passion of Huwaida Arraf, an American-born Palestinian who founded the nonviolent ISM with Dr. Ghassan Andoni. Arraf’s husband, American Jewish activist Adam Shapiro, became an overnight celebrity when he took food to Yasser Arafat as the Palestinian leader was besieged by the Israeli army in his Ramallah headquarters.
The plucky senior reluctantly left her new friends in Palestine determined to inform Americans of the reign of terror under which Palestinians live. Then, however, she learned of ISM’s call for volunteers to help protect Palestinians as they harvested olives while being attacked by armed Israeli settlers. This fall settlers burned and chopped down centuries-old trees, stole the olives and even shot harvesters, including Hani Yusuf, 24.
On Oct. 15, Hughes-Thompson left for her second trip to Palestine. Because Israeli authorities were turning away internationals trying to visit the West Bank or Gaza, she said her purpose to enter Israel was to knit, that she planned to knit in the home of an Israeli acquaintance.
“I wasn’t lying,” she told the Washington Report. “I do like to knit.”
After two-days of training in nonviolent action at ISM headquarters in Beit Sahour, Hughes-Thompson joined harvest groups at Tequa village, south of Bethlehem, and at Awarta.
“We didn’t pick olives,” she explained. “Our main job was to let the settlers and soldiers know we were there and to deflect any assaults against the Palestinians. Armed settlers threw rocks at us, cursed us, fired over our heads, and threatened us with their attack dogs. One Palestinian and an ISM volunteer received wounds that required stitches.”
Her volunteer group then moved to Yanoun, southeast of Nablus. Weeks earlier, the 25 families of Yanoun evacuated their village after masked settlers destroyed their generators and water tanks during repeated nightly attacks in which they poisoned 70 sheep and vandalized homes. Now, with the promise of protection by internationals and Israeli peace activists, a few families opted to return and try to enter their ancient olive groves.
“A couple of the villagers expressed concern that I couldn’t run fast enough if the settlers attacked,” she recalled. “I shrugged off their fears and told them no man would attack me, a white-haired granny.”
On the balmy Sunday morning of Oct. 27, Yanoun villagers and international peace volunteers harvesting olives heard gunfire nearby. When volunteers investigated, soldiers indicated there were signs of settler activity in the area and instructed them to move to olive trees closer to the village. Volunteers and villagers changed location as instructed, then decided it would be safer to return to Yanoun in case their homes came under renewed attack. Bags of olives, ladders and equipment were gathered and the international volunteers followed the Palestinians homeward.
“I was climbing the hill toward the village when six or seven men from the Itamar settlement suddenly swarmed around us, “ Hughes-Thompson recalled. “I turned to see Robbie Kelly, an Irish ISM volunteer, and Omer Elon, an Israeli Ta’ayush volunteer, being struck in the head with rifle butts. It got worse. I couldn’t believe my eyes as I saw several settlers attack James Delaplain, a 74-year-old retired English literature professor from Wisconsin. They jabbed him in the left eye and his torso with rifle butts, knocked him to the ground, and kicked him. He was begging them not to take his glasses, which he was trying to reach on the ground. They took them anyway.”
Smack! Hughes-Thompson’s walking stick was grabbed from her and violently brought down on her arm. She found herself surrounded by a half-dozen young settlers screaming obscenities at her.
“They were hitting me on the arms, the back, the chest,” she said. “I was knocked to the ground but I struggled to get up. We’d been warned if we fell they would beat us even more severely.”
One of her attackers caught sight of Hughes-Thompson’s bag, which she held tightly in her arms, and grabbed it from her. Their attention diverted to the contents of the bag, she said, her tormenters yelled, “Get out of here. Do you want a bullet? Next time, you’ll get a bullet.”
“I’m afraid I was a coward,” Hughes-Thompson confessed. “I’d cried for them to stop hitting me, I hadn’t remembered any of the things we’d been told to say about the illegally occupied land that belongs to the Palestinians.”
She scrambled toward the village, all the while screaming that the attackers had James Delaplain.
The badly injured Delaplain somehow reached the village as Israeli jeeps and police arrived at the scene. Even though the army was aware that harvesting was taking place and had guaranteed the villagers’ safety, no soldier had tried to stop the settlers’ violent attack.
An Israeli volunteer, Yossi Guttman from Haifa, drove Hughes-Thompson, Delaplain and Kelly to the hospital in Aqraba. Delaplain suffered a collapsed lung, broken ribs and a lacerated eye. Kelly underwent seven stitches in his left ear. Hughes-Thompson had no broken bones, but her arms, back and chest were badly bruised, bleeding and swollen. The settlers had stolen her two passports, air ticket, credit cards, digital camera and approximately $1,000 in cash.
Guttman drove the injured activists to police headquarters at the Ariel Settlement to file their reports, then to his bank to withdraw 500 shekles for her.
Hughes-Thompson, who was born in 1933 in Bolton, Lancashire, England, holds dual U.S./British citizenship. When it received news of the attack, the British Consulate immediately sent representatives to the village and arranged for a replacement airline ticket and new passport. The U.S. Consulate’s representative in Jerusalem promised help, but failed to follow through.
Although she of course wants to return, for the time being the committed nonviolent activist has established the Mary Hughes-Thompson Yanoun Fund to help the families of Yanoun who are slowly and fearfully returning to their village—the latest targets of enforced “transfer.” Anyone caring to contribute can send checks to the fund at P.O. Box 5341, Beverly Hills, CA 90209.
Pat and Samir Twair are free-lance journalists based in Los Angeles.
