"David Copperfield, in his wildest dreams, never made villages disappear.... never made an entire nation disappear.... BUT, Israel does it every day when it comes to Palestinians....
The weeping of Naama Masalha, who had to hide with her young children in the bathroom while the settlers smashed the windows of their house, also tells the story of that night of horror. In the small village of Al Funduq on the Qalqilyah-Nablus road...
On that Saturday night, hundreds of settlers stormed Al Funduq under the protection of Israel Defense Forces soldiers - who, according to testimony, even assisted in the destruction - and rioted in the village that was under curfew....
At the end of a muddy road, at the entrance to a relatively isolated house, stands Naama Masalha, dressed in black and extremely depressed. When settlers stormed the house, her husband, Akram, 31, was still at work, loading crates of vegetables bound for Israel. At about 9:30 P.M. he tried to get home in spite of the curfew, until he realized that the road was blocked by hundreds of settlers and soldiers. After a while he heard that the settlers were surrounding his house and damaging it, while his wife and three young children were trapped inside.
He was helpless. His young son, Rima, a first grader who is now doing his homework, brings the evidence: two IDF grenade cases, on which it says in Hebrew: "Blinding stun grenade. 1.5 second delay." Akram describes the damage, some of which has been repaired - eight shattered windows, three broken lights on the porch, torn screens, a damaged water hose - and points to footprints in the mud of the settler who arrived on horseback, to break and destroy.
Naama: "We were sleeping in the room; my husband wasn't home. Suddenly I heard the settlers breaking the windows and trying to enter the house. The door was locked." She quickly gathered her children from the spacious rooms and together they entered the bathroom, a cubicle at the end of the house, where they hid until things quieted down. They were there for over an hour. Naama's cell phone was broken and she had no way of calling for help; finally her brother managed to get to the house and rescue her. Naama is crying now. "She still cries when she remembers," says Akram. "Yesterday I told her, 'Prepare food and we'll sit the way we used to,' and she said she wasn't able to do it."
When her brother Mohammed arrived at the house, it was surrounded by a large number of settlers, among them soldiers and policemen. In order to record the event, he activated the recording device on his cell phone, after realizing that he would not be able to photograph anything because of the blackout.
Now he plays the recordings for us: "Erase this village - erase this house," one can hear a woman screaming in Hebrew, in a hoarse voice. And then one hears the sound of blows. Mohammed says the intruders banged on the windows with their weapons, throwing stones at them, and that they also had sticks and iron poles in their hands. The soldiers and policemen stood by and watched. The woman continues to scream on the recording: "People of Funduq, pay attention: You will suffer, this village is erased. In blood and in fire, this village will be erased. Come out, come out of your homes."
The recording is lengthy and not everything is clear; occasionally one hears the honking of a car horn or the noise of a stun grenade. All this time Naama and her three children were in the bathroom, frightened.
Before fleeing, the eldest daughter, Ishra, 14, saw the settler on the horse through the barred window of her room, banging on the windows. "Attention, policemen and soldiers," the voice of the female settler can be heard again. "If you don't provide a suitable response and don't take this house down, you will be to blame for the next casualties." Then, only then, can the sound of the policemen be heard, calling for all the Israelis to leave within five minutes. Naama and her three children were rescued unharmed by her brother Mohammed, and spent the following days in the home of Naama's parents in a neighboring village...."
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