By Michael Sfard
30 July 2025
I want to say something about the West Bank.
Not about starvation, not about torture, not about annihilation.
About simple, personal, small (relatively) evil.
I have been a lawyer for 26 years. I’ve been representing Palestinians who live in the West Bank throughout them. I have represented individuals, families and entire communities, and have cumulatively handled thousands of incidents in which the army, settlers or both have harmed, threatened to harm or harassed my clients.
I have never felt as helpless as I do these days.
When you learn in law school about the danger of arbitrary power – power that is unchecked, not limited by norms enshrined in law, not subject to the control of legal authorities who can restrain it – you think of faraway countries and other eras. You think of the feudal lord evicting a vassal because he doesn’t like the look of him; of the king seizing a poor man’s only lamb; of the one-party member who, with a wink, has a bothersome neighbour arrested. You think of places where there is no legal system, certainly not one that is independent and grounded in a professional ethos.
But in recent months, in the West Bank, I am staring directly into the eyes of raw, cruel, arbitrary power.
My office receives reports of the use of arbitrary force every week, every day, sometimes several times a day.
Settlers have invaded private land, harassing the owners, frightening the children;
Settlers uproot trees;
A settler in army uniform searches a shepherd’s tent, breaks property, pours out drinking water;
Soldiers dismantle security cameras installed on Palestinian homes to document harassment and attacks;
Soldiers confiscate the servers where the footage is stored;
Property is taken by police officers or soldiers who leave no receipt for the seizure;
Anyone who dares to protest is arrested;
Settlers, backed by soldiers, prevent farmers from reaching their land. They give no reason;
The police do not enforce a restraining order issued by an Israeli court against a harassing settler, do not investigate violations of the order, do not arrest him when he continues to threaten;
Police refuse to take complaints in the field or by phone – “come to the station,” they say (and wait five hours at the entrance in the heat).
All of it is illegal.
All of it is illegal.
All, all, all of it is illegal even according to the laws of the occupier itself, according to the military law that applies in the territory.
And none of it is new, except for the fact that today there is no one to talk to.
Once there was still some phone number, some officer, some policeman, some prosecutor, legal adviser or commander who still carried a shred of shame.
Today there is no one to talk to.
Either they don’t answer.
Or they answer rudely.
Or they answer and ignore you.
Those who once helped, those whose role it is to help and who understood that their mission was to enforce the law on Israeli citizens and soldiers – disappear, change positions, retire or fall in line with the spirit of the times.
The police, the army, and the settlers have always, to a large extent, been one body, but there used to be cracks between them that made it possible to obtain relief here and there, to restrain the monster of Jewish supremacy.
Today it is a single mass of distilled evil.
And another client sends a WhatsApp, and another one. And my team and I are going out of our minds.
There is no one to talk to.
And I will only take comfort in the fact that the day will come when all of you, all the servants of this system of evil – you will all be forced to explain to your children, to your grandchildren and to yourselves how it was that you were not human beings. There will be museums to tell your story and the story of your victims.
Because this will not remain so forever.
Humanity will not lose this battle, the one in which I will forever stand on the side of those whom you have already stripped of their humanity in your minds and in your hearts.
Michael Sfard is an Israeli human rights lawyer who for the past 21 years has used the law to fight Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and its policies of racism and apartheid. Much of that work has been trying to protect and represent, as legal counsel, Palestinians and their communities and activists supporting them. Michael Sfard spoke on these matters at the BPP annual conference in London last May.