We immediately began trying to shadow the settlers, following them wherever they went. We were trying to put two of us on each settler, but in some situations the settlers outnumbered us. And there was the additional problem of the Palestinians being already spread out. But we did have some success in diverting the attention of the settlers in their attempts to attack the Palestinians.

While all of this was happening, we noticed two Israeli soldiers standing a distance away, watching, doing nothing. Three soldiers finally arrived on the scene - a grossly inadequate number. They began telling the internationals to leave.

There was, of course, no reasoning with the settlers. We reminded them that none of us was armed, and that we were here to harvest olives. But the settlers continued to shout things like, "You came with the murderous Arabs to our settlement to kill us." One of them taunted us, saying, "Don't touch me, don't touch my gun-if you do, I'll kill you. Come on, touch my gun, touch my gun!" Their language was, of course, foul-"bitch!," "faggot!" "Fuck you," "Fuck your
country!" etc. Other quotes were noteworthy. One of us said to them, "The whole world is watching you." The reply was: "The whole world hates us because they are anti-Semites, and these Jews that are with you here - they are anti-Semites!"