Shiloh
The first order of business in my third settlement is to get a bottle of wine. Avi drives me down the hill to visit the wine presses of a fellow American immigrant. We pass a group of Palestinian workers leaving a building site with a Jewish security guard and Avi shakes his head over the practice.unfinished house across the way, awaiting their ride back to settlement gates at end of day. January 15, 2016 (Photo: Philip Weiss)
“The policy here is you can’t employ Palestinians from neighboring villages because they will get to know Shiloh too well and if they ever pop off, they will know the community’s vulnerabilities,” he explains. “Though why you would want to hire people who want to kill you– I don’t understand it.”
The winemaker has a substantial workshop with a pergola, a studio, and a lordly view. He beats me for $20 for his Merlot. “No sulfides,” Avi says. “And the yeast isn’t added. It’s the yeast that God put on the grapes.”