Back in 2016, Washington Post emissary Anne-Marie O’Connor ventured to the illegal Israeli West Bank outpost of Havat Gilad to report on how “tourism is the new front in Israeli settlers’ battle for legitimacy”. Indeed, there were not many better ways for a major US newspaper to contribute to this battle than by dispatching a writer to sample “‘the good life’, with fine cabernets and artisanal cheese on the hilltops of the rugged, rural Bible land populated by the gun-toting children of Abraham”.
In the Zionist view, of course, the territory’s association with “Bible land” confers more-than-sufficient legitimacy upon its illegal usurpation from Palestinians. In Havat Gilad, O’Connor mustered such charming politico-touristic observations as “Holiday chalets are new facts on the ground” and “Wine tastings are a new weapon against a two-state solution” – with a proliferation of West Bank boutique wineries effectively constituting a wine-washing of occupation.
The journalist chose to conclude her report with a quote from Karni Eldad, co-author of a West Bank vacation guidebook, who insisted that the local panorama was about so much more than “hilltop youth burning a house” in the village of Duma – a reference, O’Connor explained, to the “young Jewish extremists who are the alleged perpetrators of a firebombing” in 2015 that “killed a Palestinian mother and father and their 18-month-old baby, and severely burned their 5-year-old boy”.
At that “same hilltop” that produced the alleged firebombers, Eldad emphasised, “there is a herd of goats that has unbelievable cheese”. Enough said. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.