Yesterday I went to visit the hilltop town of Amona, which the government of Israel and the Supreme Court are fighting over right now. They can’t decide what to do with 40 families who’ve been living there for 15+ years, now that EU-sponsored NGO Yesh Adin has been agitating and saying that part of the town is on “private Palestinian land”.

We’re waiting to hear the exact terms of a deal that has been offered to the residents of Amona today. But they have a gun to their heads: accept the deal or their eviction begins at midnight.

I went to meet one of the residents, Eli, who runs their social media account: he’s the person I know purely by chance. He has a PhD in ancient languages and has done some real archeology on that hill. Today he works in high tech, when he’s not trying to stop bulldozers destroying his home.

It’s an easy one-hour drive from North Tel Aviv, though most Tel Aviv Israelis don’t realise that. You drive east on a big highway, zoom through one security checkpoint that marks the old green line, and carry on to the city of Ariel. Turn right just after that and join the ancient Route 60: the Way of the Patriarchs. The route is clearly described in the Bible as that taken by Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Pass by Shiloh (the first capital of Israel for 300 years before Jerusalem), and 10 minutes later you come to Ofra and its satellite village of Amona.

As usual for the towns and villages in Judea and Samaria, it’s a desolate hilltop that nobody has set foot on for 3,000 years; certainly no Arab walked all the way up there between ’49 and ’67. Jews have industriously built a nice community, growing wine, raising sheep and even raspberries, and these monsters want to tear it down.

Eli took me to see an ancient wine press: carved stones, a giant storage cistern in the ground and various other parts. Jews were here before making wine, and they’ve returned to make wine again. Judaism is indigenous to these hills and it’s obvious.

We talked, and I described how I was self-taught about Islam. I said that the joy of the times we live in is that when your read something that interests you, it’s generally possible to send an email and get in touch with the author. I then said, for example, Bat Ye’or. He said wait a minute, and went to his bookshelf and brought back a copy of The Dhimmi in Hebrew! I can tell you he fully understands the concept of Dhimmitude and how it relates to the mental state of Jews who would hand over that land in the HOPE that our Muslim overlords would leave the rest of us alone.

“Security forces prepare to evacuate Amona,” by Uzi Baruch, Israel National News, December 14, 2016: