Even before the end of the ceasefire in Gaza, Israeli attacks on the West Bank were escalating in 2025. By Feb. 5, 70 Palestinians were reported killed this year alone. Anna Lippman, a member of Independent Jewish Voices, has traveled on numerous occasions to the West Bank from her home in Toronto, Canada, to stand with Palestinians defending their land from attacks by Israeli soldiers and armed settlers.
Most recently, Lippman was in the Masafer Yatta community in the occupied West Bank as Hamdan Ballal, Oscar-winning Palestinian director of the film No Other Land, was detained by Israeli forces after being attacked by armed Israeli settlers in that same community. Lippman joins The Marc Steiner Show for an in-depth discussion on her experiences on the ground in the West Bank, where attempted land grabs and expulsions of Palestinians are growing by the day.
Producer: Rosette Sewali
Studio Production: David Hebden
Post-Production: Alina Nehlich
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Marc Steiner:
Welcome to The Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. It’s good to have you all with us as we continue to cover Palestine and Israel and hear from people throughout that struggle, and continue our series Not in Our Name — Jewish voices that oppose the occupation of Palestine and the oppression and repression of Palestinians by Israelis.
On March 24, co-director of the film No Other Land, Hamdan Ballal, was attacked by Israeli settlers and was badly injured — And while in the ambulance, he was attacked again. The Israeli police took him to an unknown location and, following an international outcry, he was released the next day.
Toronto resident Anna Lippman was in the area known as Masafer Yatta on the West Bank. While she was providing protective presence to Palestinians, Lippman, whois Jewish, was also attacked — Though not as severely — By Israeli settlers, and also was not arrested. Lippman spoke afterwards to the online media where she said what brings you back here is the people, meeting the people here, the children, the elders, the activists, the mothers, all of them, seeing the way that they continue to resist — Not just writing articles, but sharing their story through their everyday acts of resistance, continuing to be on their land, continuing their careers, their family lives, and the joy they find on their land and with their families, with their communities. It’s so beautiful. The hospitality they gave me as a Jewish person whose taxes and identity are used to kill their cousins, they welcome me into their home and feed me even though they have almost nothing.
Today we are joined by Anna Lippman. She’s a Toronto member of Independent Jewish Voices, and has long been showing up in solidarity with Palestinian people in opposition to Israel’s campaign of violence and displacement. And she opposes deeply, which we’ll talk about today, the conflation of anti-Zionism and antisemitism. Now, she went to the West Bank to protect Palestinians and showed huge heart and courage in her time there. She’s the daughter of a Holocaust surviving family and takes that into her heart as well when it comes to fighting and supporting liberation of Palestinian people.
Anna, welcome. It’s good to have you with us.
Anna Lippman:
Thanks for having me.
Marc Steiner:
So many places to start, but let me just begin, if you could just talk a bit about your time on the West Bank: A, was that the first time you’ve been there? And B, how did that affect you? You went there already opposed to the occupation, but I’m very curious how that affected you when you were there.
Anna Lippman:
Yeah, so I’m actually currently in the West Bank.
Marc Steiner:
At this moment?
Anna Lippman:
At this moment, which is why my internet is still terrible. So I’ve been here for two months, and I’ll be here for another month. It’s actually my fourth time here doing protective presence work, using both my international and my Jewish privilege to try to mitigate the violence and the ethnic cleansing.
As a kid, I went to Israel a lot of times, but I had never been to the occupied Palestinian territories, the West Bank. And so going for my first time and seeing it, even though I had been doing this work for so long, it really made my resolve so much stronger because the things that you see here, it’s impossible to imagine. And the relationships that you make with the people here and then the violence that you witness upon them, it just breaks your heart.
Marc Steiner:
So let me jump into some things you just said because I think it’s important. For people listening to us today, where are you on the West Bank? Who are you staying with?
Anna Lippman:
I am in the region of Masafer Yatta, the South Hebron Hills, and I’m in the village of Susya, most famous for being the home of Academy Award-winning director Hamdan Bilal.
Marc Steiner:
So I assume then, if you’re there, you’re staying with Palestinian families?
Anna Lippman:
They’re hosting us in the village. They have basically a guest house in the middle of the village where we sleep and where basically, when we’re not sleeping, children either are playing with us [Steiner laughs] or people are coming to get us to respond to attacks.
Marc Steiner:
And who is the we?
Anna Lippman:
So I’m actually here with seven other Jewish activists. We’re part of the Center for Jewish Nonviolence. There’s also several other non-Jewish activists. But for myself and for the people in this group, it’s really important for us to show up as Jews because, not [inaudible] show the world what it means to oppose the state and Zionism, but also so many Palestinians here have never met a Jew that doesn’t want to harm them. And so this, in many ways, is the work of doing that cultural exchange and helping people understand that this is a terrible thing that is happening, but it doesn’t represent all Jews.
Marc Steiner:
One thing you said, just to explore briefly for a moment together about the pain and terror the Jews and Israelis are foisting on Palestinians in this occupation and more. And I was reading about your work and who you are, and the idea that Jews, who suffered so much over thousands of years, who survived — And my family survived the Holocaust, the Cossack repressions in Eastern Poland, the inquisitions that took place. Everything that has happened to us as a people over the millennia, that we could then turn and do what we’re doing in Israel.
Anna Lippman:
Yes, I agree with you. And on the inside, I wonder the same way. Especially, like you, I’m the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor. She was in Auschwitz. To understand the way that that which happened before I was born impacts my life, I could never want to do this to someone else. But also, it’s the plain and sad truth that hurt people hurt people. And if Jews, we don’t deal with our trauma, if we’re able to let others exploit it for their imperial goals, then of course we’re seeing what’s happening in Israel.
Marc Steiner:
So I’m very curious what the response has been to you, first from the Israelis, but then the Palestinians. What has been your experience in what we might call Israel proper, for the moment, in terms of what you experience when people know who you are and why you’re there?
Anna Lippman:
To be honest, I don’t tell people within Israel proper who I am and why I’m there [Steiner laughs].
Marc Steiner:
I get it.
Anna Lippman:
[Crosstalk] I fear for my life.
Marc Steiner:
Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes.
Anna Lippman:
And even in the West Bank, we have to be a little careful who we talk to about what we’re doing because there are many ways that these names get back to the Israeli government. It’s despicably easy for me to get away with this within Israel because I look very Ashkenazi. I look like everyone else. No one looks at me and blinks twice. And that’s why the Jews come to do this work is because we have these privileges and we might as well exploit them for something good.
Marc Steiner:
So let’s explore for a moment what that work is. When you say, we’ve said a number of times, you’re there doing this work, talk to people listening to us today about what this work is that you’re doing.
Anna Lippman:
So a lot of what we’re doing is documentation and accompaniment work. So, especially in Masafer Yatta, most of the people here are farmers and shepherds. They very much rely on the land. And so a key way for them to be able to remain here is to be able to take their flocks out, is to be able to harvest their crops. And so we literally just accompany them on their shepherding shifts, as they go to the grocery store, what have you, not only because Palestinians, Israelis, and internationals understand that you don’t want to act the same towards Palestinians in private that you do in front of an international. Because I’m getting this interview and Palestinians are not, so they don’t want us to tell the world what they’re doing to the Palestinians, what’s happening. And this is what we do when we bring our privilege here is we’re able to share it back out.
Marc Steiner:
In the process of your work over there, what has been your interaction with Israelis, with Jewish Israelis, about what you’re doing?
Anna Lippman:
Yeah, it’s been terrible. When the army comes, they give us quite a hard time despite us being Jewish. They call us anarchists. They say we are making chaos. A soldier told me the other day that I was here to make problems for the Jewish. And the settlers themselves, they’re even worse. The army will call us traitors, self-hating Jews, but the settlers will yell all kinds of profanities at us. They’ll chase us. I’ve been in multiple rock attacks.
Marc Steiner:
What does that mean?
Anna Lippman:
Groups of young settlers coming to throw rocks at the villages, the Palestinians, basically a stoning.
Marc Steiner:
In their minds a biblical stoning.
Anna Lippman:
Yes, of course.
Marc Steiner:
The vast majority of settlers in the West Bank are right-wing extremist, Orthodox Jews, is that right?
Anna Lippman:
Yeah. And the thing is that on the front lines of these more extremist settlements are mostly young men, like 15- to 20-year-olds that are sometimes called the Hilltop Youth, who are taken from bad homes, off the street, and brought to these settlements that are run by really right-wing fascist people that tell them, this is your land. You must protect it. You must shepherd. And if you see Palestinians, attack them before they attack you. And so who we mostly see is teenage boys, and that makes it a difficult dynamic to hate them.
Marc Steiner:
I understand. Let me take a step backwards here with you for just a minute because this is literally, I’ve been involved in this, in covering this, my entire life, almost. But what you’re describing now, what you just said about Israeli boys on these settlements attacking you and the Palestinians were brought there, were in trouble and brought to these… Talk a bit about that. Who are these kids? Where they come from? What do you mean they were in trouble? It sounds like what — And I hate saying this — It sounds like what fascists did in Germany and Italy, taking youths off the street and turning them into stormtroopers.
Anna Lippman:
Yes, exactly. And it’s very similar here. Sometimes it’s rabbis, sometimes it’s just agricultural entrepreneurs. And they’ll go to places like Tel Aviv, like Jerusalem, like Be’er Sheva, places within 48, and they’ll tout their programs as helping at-risk youth and providing rehabilitation centers for at-risk youth. So these previously street youth are now productive members of society. They’re learning how to farm, they’re going to school.
And actually, because they’re touted this way, they get a lot of funding from places like the JNF that funds social service projects, from places like the Israeli government that funds rehabilitation for at-risk youth. But at the same time, there’s enough of a distance that the Israeli government can blame these youth for an attack. And then, through keeping an arm’s distance to them, they’re both supporting the youth to be there to do this ethnic cleansing, and they can blame the youth and say it’s not part of the state, it’s extrastate actors.
Marc Steiner:
So would it be fair to say, just to explore this for a moment — Then we can go on something else — But is it fair to say that these kids that are taken to these settlements, who are in trouble from the stuff they did in the streets, are kids who are what we call Mizrahim, that there are kids who are from Arab African descent in Israel. Would that be about right?
Anna Lippman:
Mostly not. Mostly they’re Ashkenazi. Sometimes they’re Mizrahi, but the vast majority of them are Ashkenazi. A lot of them are from places like Europe and Ukraine. A lot of them are just born and raised in Israel.
Marc Steiner:
That’s a pretty horrendous description. I think the world is not aware of what you’re describing at this moment. I think most people, I wasn’t, are not aware, and I stay on top of this. It’s something that is almost, it’s a frightening Orwellian step.
Anna Lippman:
It definitely is. And it’s been happening for quite a while. And not only is it terrible for the Palestinians, but it’s so exploitative [of] these young men.
Marc Steiner:
Yes, absolutely. I’m also curious, I’ve not been to the West Bank, but as a young person — I was a very young person — I was a Freedom Rider, and I was [on the] Eastern shore Maryland, Mississippi, Alabama. And it was terrifying. But you did it because it had to be done.
Anna Lippman:
Exactly.
Marc Steiner:
So I want to talk about you in that regard. What it’s like for you to live on the edge of that violence, protecting the human rights and liberation of Palestinians as a Jewish woman?
Anna Lippman:
It’s a lot. It’s very scary, and it’s not comfortable. I think a lot of times I feel like I’m on a three-month firefighting shift. You can never really put your guard completely down because things could go off at any minute and you’ll have to run out of the house and go stop this fire. And it really impacts the activists here because it’s a lot on your body, on your mind.
And then I see the Palestinians who live this every day, and I remember that I will go home to Netflix and Uber Eats, and they will not. This is where they live. And so I think, just like you said, this is what has to be done, even though it’s not my favorite thing to do, for sure.
Marc Steiner:
All right. So I guess you’ve been aware of all the crackdowns taking place in Canada, in Germany, across the globe, against Palestinians.
Anna Lippman:
Absolutely.
Marc Steiner:
So just to hear your thoughts and analysis of what all that means, this literally international crackdown, and it’s going to begin to happen in larger ways here in the United States as well with Donald Trump back in the White House.
Anna Lippman:
Absolutely, yeah. No, I totally agree. And Canada is not that far off from Trump. We don’t know who’s going to win this next election, and Canada is going quite right itself. And I think one thing I’ve always learned about Palestine is it’s sort of the moral center of the world. Everything that Israel does in Palestine, their militarization, their technology, their AI, they export it to the rest of the world. Police, [armies] from all over the world, go train with the IDF.
And so to me, [it’s] surprising to see the ways that this extreme crackdown is going global and is starting to impact people that perhaps thought they were a bit more safe. And I think that’s why everyone who feels strongly about this, who feels strongly about the right to speak up for what you believe in, needs to be saying no, needs to be standing up. Because if we don’t say this is too much, what student are they going to snatch off the streets next?
Marc Steiner:
And it sounds like, what I’ve seen written before and what you’re describing, people don’t realize this Western American and Israeli cooperation in testing out weaponry and more is a test run for oppression universally.
Anna Lippman:
Exactly, yes. And Israel does it very well. And other imperial settler colonial countries like Canada, they pay attention. They want to do it well too.
Marc Steiner:
So tell me a bit, for people listening to us in the time we have left, a bit about what your daily life and work is like there, what you’re experiencing firsthand as a young Jewish woman in the West Bank living with Palestinians and staring down right-wing settlers and the Israeli army.
Anna Lippman:
I think what, to me, is most noticeable about my day-to-day experience here is it’s so unpredictable that it’s impossible to plan a month ahead, and very difficult to plan two days ahead.
Marc Steiner:
Wow.
Anna Lippman:
We’ll wake up, we’ll go shepherding, we’ll be having a lovely time, and then suddenly a settler will come in their truck, try to run us over, and we’re taking footage of this, talking to lawyers, taking people to the police station to give testimony. And that’s your whole day. And sometimes we can be very lucky and we’ll just have a morning where things are great and we’ll get to hang out with the families and just chill. But even in those quiet times, there’s still tension because it’s so unpredictable that you never know what is coming or when. And every time that you continue to stay in your land, that you continue to call settlers out, they seek revenge. So just like the Palestinians here, I can’t really give you a day-to-day because the settlers don’t let us have that regularity and schedule.
Marc Steiner:
What do you mean by that?
Anna Lippman:
They keep us on our toes by intentionally being unpredictable, by telling us they’ll come back tonight, then not, but coming to attack three days later. So it’s very hard.
Marc Steiner:
As an activist in the midst of this, and more in the middle of it than most people are who might oppose what’s happening, becausre you’re there, physically there, putting your life on the line, how do you see it unfolding in the future? And where are the possibilities that we can actually find a road to peace where Israelis and Palestinians, Muslims, Christians, and Jews live in that place together? Because in the end, for me, I have this poster on my wall — I’ve said this before on other shows — I have this poster on my wall that I got in Cuba in 1968, and it’s a map of all of Palestine, and it has a Palestinian flag on one side and an Israeli flag on the other side, and it says “One state, two people, three faiths”. And that’s kind of been my mantra for a long time. So I’m asking you that question in that spirit because it almost feels impossible to attain.
Anna Lippman:
Yeah, I think that it has been really grim for the last two or so years, and it’s been really difficult to find hope. I think where I find hope is the fact that so many more people know about Palestine than they did in 2014, than they did in 2021. So for me, this gives me hope when I see a random person that’s not Jewish, that’s not Arab, who knows about Palestine and cares about the injustice there. I think the more we speak up, the more we ask our governments to hold the Israeli government accountable, the more that we will find actual peace.
But it’s also important to recognize that peace, true peace, means equality, humanity, and dignity for everyone from the river to the sea. And so we cannot have a state, two states, 12 states, I don’t care [Steiner laughs]. But if Palestinians don’t have the right to live in their land, to return to their ancestral land, to be as much of a society as an Israeli citizen is, there will never be peace because peace is not built on oppression.
Marc Steiner:
Anna Lippman, a couple of things here. First of all, I do want to say this to you, and I want everyone listening to us here at The Real News to know it, what you and others like you are doing at this moment takes, and the Yiddish word is chutzpah, takes a lot of heart and strength and bravery to stand up for what you’re doing. It’s not just carrying a placard around an embassy. You’re in the midst of it, saying, no, not in our name, this has to end.
And I do want to thank you for what you’re doing. I think your voice and the voices of others around you, along with Palestinians, is what we want to continue to hear more [of] on this program. And for one, I want to stay in touch, and I want to help work to bring more voices like yours on, but also to expand those voices and give people the opportunity and chance to do exactly what you are doing.
Anna Lippman:
Yes, I love that.
Marc Steiner:
That will change it.
Anna Lippman:
I think so. We gotta have hope, right?
Marc Steiner:
Yes, we do. Look, I’ll say this one last thing. I say this often. One of the scariest things for people in the South during Civil Rights, which you see all the white freedom workers, and among those, the majority of the white people who put their lives on the line in Civil Rights were Jews.
Anna Lippman:
Yes. This is our history, right?
Marc Steiner:
Yes. Right. So you’re carrying on a tradition, and you’re a brave human being, a brave woman. Let’s do stay in touch, and whatever stories we can tell together about your experience and others’ experiences and the experiences of the Palestinian lives that you touch and live with, we want to put on the air and do that.
Anna Lippman:
Yeah. That’s so great. Thank you so much for having me, and, really, for everything.
Marc Steiner:
Please stay safe and stay strong. Thank you.
Anna Lippman:
Thank you.
Marc Steiner:
Thank you once again to Anna Lippman for joining us today. And I want to reiterate what I said during our conversation. The bravery she and other young Jews are showing in Israel Palestine, living with Palestinians to say, we, as Jews, say not in our name, is literally putting their lives on the line, just as people did to end racial segregation in America. We will, I will, continue to highlight their work, and we’ll be hearing more from Anna Lippman, and other Anna Lippmans as well, as the voices of the Palestinians they work with put their lives on the line, and they’re there to stand with them.
Once again, thank you to Anna Lippman for joining us today. Thanks to David Hebden for running the program today, our audio editor, Alina Nehlich, and producer, Rosette Sewali, for making it all work behind the scenes, and everyone here at The Real News for making this show possible.
Please let me know what you thought about what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you. Once again, thank you, Anna Lippman, for all the work you do and for joining us today. So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.
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