West of Eden: Deeply unpleasant

Olive groves in Farata, West Bank, during the settler attacks of October 2010, via Piglipstick.

And here's our old friend, dean of the foreign correspondents, the gracious-living A.J. Liebling of the postmodern era, Steven Erlanger, who has for some reason given the Times his Yelp review of a disappointing holiday spot in the um Occupied West Bank, or Samaria as the locals call it, well, some of the locals, if you know what I mean, at a "studio house" in the illegal settlement (so illegal the Israeli government has attempted to demolish it every once in a while) of Havat Gilad, booked through Aibnb for just $111 a night, with

several rooms, sparely furnished and not completely finished, and a lot of junk outside, including empty ammunition crates used for storage. The views over the hills are of a Palestinian village, Farata, and another hilltop Israeli settlement, Ramat Gilad.

Ah, charming Farata. Did he see any of the famous olive trees, I wonder?

15 October 2010 – A 500-dunam olive grove by the village of Farata was firebombed by settlers from the wildcat Jewish settlement of Havat Gilad^[23] as part of a price tag operation. According to eyewitness Rabbi Yehiel Grenimann, who notified authorities as the arson attack got underway, Israeli soldiers prevented fire trucks from entering to put out the blaze for an hour, and local Palestinians asking for their assistance were themselves detained for three hours...

For the record, 500 dunam is a fraction over 123 acres. Apparently no, he didn't see the groves of Farata, if they still exist, and doesn't mention them. I imagine they weren't part of the program for Steven and his photographer, which was supposed to include

a dinner, and visits with some of the 30 families who live in [Havat Gilad's] cement-block houses, many of them prettied up with tiles and modern appliances, much as they had given German and Dutch couples who booked the place before.

It would have been delightful no doubt, but it was not to be:

as we chatted with Mrs. Shimon in her kitchen, with the washing machine running and two of her eight children running about, a member of the regional settler’s council called and told her not to let us stay. 

You see, it appears there's something "controversial" about Airbnb's listings for Jewish settlements in the Occupied Territories, which don't mention that the settlements are regarded as illegal in most of the world, and which have been condemned by the Palestinian Authority for “effectively promoting the illegal colonization of occupied land”:

Settler groups, naturally, have fought back, encouraging more residents to list their homes on the site as a new platform to promote their intention to expand the state of Israel beyond its pre-1967 lines, and guiding journalists on tours of carefully selected properties.

Naturally! And you see, they're not promoting the colonization at all, they're merely promoting their intention to colonize.

So Erlanger did have a lovely time schmoozing with a glass artist and mother of four in Kida (home of the three male settlers who jumped out from the roadside and shot 16-year-old Wael Toubasy in the stomach as he and his older brother Shadi were going home from work in their olive groves on June 15 2011), for just $104 a night, "sumptuous breakfast optional", and a nice tour of the Psagot Winery in the northern Jerusalem hills (where robust reds are made from grapes grown on borrowed Palestinian land and processed with water siphoned from Palestinian villages). But he didn't get to stay in Havat Gilad, unfortunately, because of that local council member, who was worried that the Times might write unkind things about them:

“We decide who will come and who will not,” he said when I finally reached him by phone. “We do it in a certain order, to meet official representatives of the council.” Speaking in English, which is not his first language, he added: “We’re afraid you come very nice and paint us in black colors.”

Well, did you ever! And the fellow didn't even speak idiomatic English! Erlanger didn't think to ask him if he'd ever firebombed anybody's orchard or shot anybody in the stomach, but he did want to know if he was some kind of Communistic opponent of press freedom:

Asked if this was not a Soviet-style effort at news media control, and if the council did not trust its own citizens, he insisted that he had made only “a suggestion” to Mrs. Shimon...

And so Erlanger and his photographer, not wishing to cause Mrs. Shimon any trouble, agreed to leave, even though they had made a proper reservation and everything. So no stars!

we left, with a deeply unpleasant taste of the controversy surrounding Airbnb in recent weeks

Deeply unpleasant! I promise you, we won't be staying here again! The service is dreadful!

But I'll bet, you know, if he'd gone down to Farata he and the photographer would have gotten a simple meal and a place to spend the night for free, perhaps without the pretty tiles and modern appliances. Though that might have been controversial too.