31 July 2026

Erella has sent us another update on life in the West Bank. As she travelled to see a friend who was dying of cancer, she heard about the theft of 200 sheep. They had been stolen by armed Jewish settlers  from the pens of the Moor family in the village of Mnezel.

Although the sheep had Palestinian Authority ear tags, they were being driven out in broad daylight by settlers who claimed they had been stolen from them! Full military backing prevented the herd owner, his family and his friends from resisting this outrageous theft.

Friends got together to discuss the situation. Samir  drafted an e-mail to all the villages in the Masafer and beyond. Within twenty-four hours, 85 sheep had been brought to Samir’s home. They were loaded into a large truck and taken to the Moor family in Mnezel.

As Erella wrote, ‘Neither reporters from the Palestinian Authority nor foreign correspondents showed up. It wasn’t reported in any newspaper or on the news. They didn’t make history. They were merely generous, doing a good deed for someone and for themselves.’

It reminded Erella of a quotation from Zhuang Zhou, Chinese philosopher, who lived 2,300 years ago. ‘In the days when life was full, nobody paid much attention to very important people, nobody pointed out particularly capable people. Rulers were merely like the branches of tall trees and people were like deer in the forest.

‘They were upright and virtuous without knowing that they were ‘doing their duty’ and they loved one another without knowing that this meant ‘loving one’s fellow man’. They didn’t cheat anyone and it didn’t occur to them that they were trustworthy.

‘They were people who could be trusted without knowing that this was ‘good faith’. They lived together in a spirit of give-and-take without knowing that they were ‘generous’. For this reason, their actions received no titles. They didn’t make history.’  And Erella concludes, ‘Luckily, all over the world, people like that exist.’