🐑 Israeli KKK, terrorizing Palestinian farmers, gouge the eyes out of sheep, torture and kill them. All under the protection of the IDF.

What the KKK did to Black farmers in the Jim Crow South, Israeli settlers now do to Palestinian families—under the protection of soldiers.

Content note: what follows includes graphic violence against animals—documented proof of a crime that must be seen to be believed.

Family, I’m asking you at the very top to become a member today. I keep this reporting free for the world—for readers in Gaza, for readers in Sudan, for readers living in deep poverty, for readers in middle school. If that matters to you, please click here to become a member. And if you can, click here to join as a monthly, annual, or founding member so this work stays free for them, and even for you when you can’t afford to pay.

On the outskirts of as-Samu, in the South Hebron Hills of the occupied West Bank, a Palestinian family watched their home become a battlefield. Not a battlefield between armies. A battlefield between masked settlers and a family of farmers who keep sheep and raise children.

On November 2nd, Israeli media published security-camera footage from the Dramin family’s yard: nine masked men carrying clubs fan out through the gate. They shatter windshields and torch harvests. Three of them slip into the sheep pen and begin beating lambs in front of the ewes—throwing the babies to the floor, hurling concrete blocks, swinging clubs, stomping fragile bodies until the pen is quiet. By one count at least six lambs were killed and four gravely injured that night; other reports say ten were killed across attacks on neighboring pens in the same burst of violence. What no one disputes is the intent: terrorize the family by slaughtering their livelihood in front of their eyes.

No Hamas on this farm.
No tunnels on this farm.
No hostages on this farm.
No weapons on this farm.

Just humble people and their livestock.

When I read the accounts, the brutality didn’t end at the pen. Inside the house, settlers smashed windows and the front door, then blasted pepper gas throughout the rooms. Two gas grenades were tossed inside. An infant—six months old—was hospitalized, along with other children. The family is home now, but still under treatment. The mother and father are trying to console babies who learned too early that men can come in the night and turn a home into a gas chamber.

Step back from this single night and you will see a pattern that Palestinians have begged the world to see: settler violence on a near-daily basis, carried out with overwhelming impunity. Human-rights monitors have documented hundreds of attacks this year alone, with a reported 757 incidents in the first half of 2025 that caused casualties or property damage—a 13% increase over the same period last year. Meanwhile, settler outposts have mushroomed: monitors counted 84 new outposts over the past year, compared with 49 the year before—many of them illegal even under Israeli law. Outposts that pop up as a single caravan become the excuse to seize land, push Palestinians off hillsides, and call the theft “facts on the ground.”

Settlers don’t just use their fists and clubs. They use ATVs, which far-right ministers boast of providing to outposts to extend reach. They use drones to chase flocks until ewes miscarry. They scatter poisoned bait to kill farm dogs and wildlife—carcasses later dumped at village entrances to send a message: leave. They steal flocks, slaughter what they take, and burn what they can’t. And when Palestinian families file complaints, they learn the bitter grammar of occupation: the police will announce an investigation, collect a car, and produce no arrests.

I need you to understand this with a clear moral frame: these settlers are modern-day terrorists. Their objective is not security. Their objective is domination through dispossession. They are the night riders of our time. In the Jim Crow South, the KKK burned Black families’ homes, gutted their barns, torched their fields, and killed livestock—not because a cow was a threat, but because terrorizing a Black farmer was the fastest way to steal land and break a community’s will. I know that history well. I know the stories. And when I watch masked men beat lambs to death in front of weeping ewes, I don’t see “clashes.” I see the same objective wearing a different uniform.

International law does not hesitate here. The West Bank is occupied territory. Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, the occupying power has a legal duty to protect civilians and their property, to prevent and punish crimes committed under its watch, and not to transfer its own civilians into the territory (Article 49(6)). Wilful killing, ill-treatment, and extensive destruction of property not justified by military necessity are grave breaches—what the layperson calls war crimes. When soldiers stand by as settlers attack, or arrive only to retrieve a suspect’s car, or escort outpost expansions, that is not “neutral.” That is state responsibility wearing a uniform.

I know what the apologists will say: “But there’s a war.” Let me be precise: there was no battle on this farm. There were babies in cribs, children in hallways, and lambs in a pen. If you need a security pretext to justify throwing concrete blocks onto a newborn’s body, the problem is your morality, not my words.

I want to put a few facts in one place no one can spin:

• Place: as-Samu, South Hebron Hills; the family lives ~500 meters from the illegal settlement of Susya.

• Attackers: nine masked settlers, armed with clubs and concrete blocks; ATVs have appeared in recent attacks in the region.

• Farm toll: at least six lambs killed and four gravely injured (other reporting says ten killed); hay bales torched, vehicle destroyed.

• Home toll: windows and front door smashed; pepper gas deployed inside; two gas grenades thrown; children hospitalized, including a six-month-old infant.

• Police posture: public claims of an investigation; a suspect vehicle recovered by IDF/Border Police/Shin Bet; no arrests reported to date.

• Pattern: near-daily settler attacks; 757 incidents in the first half of 2025; 84 new outposts in a single year.

If you felt your stomach turn reading this, good. If you felt déjà vu—thinking of Black families whose barns were burned, whose livestock were shot, whose land deeds went up in smoke under the “law”—good. We must stop letting officials hide behind the word security when the method is terror and the goal is to make a people disappear from their land.

Here is what should happen now:

The family should receive immediate restitution for their animals and crops; their complaint should trigger a real criminal probe with named suspects, arrests, and charges; the nearby illegal outpost should be dismantled; the military commander for the area should be forced to explain under oath why soldiers did not protect civilians during repeated attacks; and international monitors should treat the systematic targeting of livestock and livelihoods as what it is—a tool of forced displacement.

And I will say this plainly to the governments who fund or arm this machine: if your money, your equipment, and your political cover make nights like this one possible, you are not bystanders. You are partners.

If you’ve read this far, you are family. Join as a monthly, annual, or founding member so I can keep this reporting free for the world—and so we can keep bringing you receipts, names, and maps the same day the violence happens.

Love and appreciate each of you.
Your friend and brother,
Shaun

Here are 3 FREE articles for you with NO PAYWALL…

---

---

---