In late 2019, I volunteered for two weeks in the West Bank city of Hebron. This was part of a month-long sojourn and reporting trip through Israel and the Palestinian territories. I hadn’t planned on volunteering, but upon showing up at a hostel in Hebron the owner assumed I was there to help and essentially volunteered me. He was welcoming and enthusiastic, seeking a peaceful improvement of the tensions in the area, so I thought “why not?”
My new local friend ran a charity improving education, health care, and language services for local residents as well as showing Westerners the area. We became friends, smoking the hookah on a nightly basis and talking about life. Locals were also friendly, inviting me in for tea and offering hospitality.
Despite my friend blaming “the occupation” for all the problems of the region and talking about trauma during the Second Intifada when Israel clamped down on the uprising, I found him an honorable and well-intentioned guy, albeit with a view of history I later found to be inaccurate.
The people I did not find honorable or relatable were the Western volunteers. In fact, I found them to be victimhood parasites, feeding vicariously off the victim narrative under the guise of compassion. This has begun to grate on me more and more in the years since I was in Israel and Palestine and now makes the radical left’s reaction to the situation all the more explainable.
Much of what was told to me
