Dear Friends,

The growing violence in the West Bank has been in the news here in the US. The New York Times ran a story recently about the increase in attacks by Israeli settlers and soldiers against Palestinian civilians. But Palestinians have been living with Israeli cruelty for a long time. Some of the longstanding, everyday violence against Palestinians is documented in the West Bank at the Walled Off Hotel and Museum in Bethlehem, which was created in 2017 by the renowned international artist Bansky.

From The New York Times: “More than 3,200 Palestinians [in the West Bank] have been displaced by settler attacks this year alone — double the rate of last year. As the pace of violence climbs, the U.N. says, the number of Palestinians injured in settler attacks has risen from an average of one every three days in 2020 to more than three per day in 2026." 

A retired Israeli brigadier general is quoted in the article: “This is ethnic cleansing, to put it simply.” 

Why didn’t we have pieces like this before? Was the amount of violence and displacement in 2020 (and before that) ok? We are also left to wonder, where are the individual news stories about more than three attacks happening per day? And why do we need Israeli generals to confirm what Palestinians have been telling us?

I first visited the Walled Off Hotel and its accompanying museum in 2018, and have visited several times since then. In March of 2023, I was able to see some of the guest rooms. Banksy intended the hotel and its museum to bring needed tourist dollars to this West Bank City, and also to bring attention to the injustice of the occupation and the oppressive presence of Israel’s separation wall (also known as the apartheid wall or in Israel as the security fence).

Billed as the hotel with the worst view in the world, the Walled Off Hotel looks out over the wall, which runs throughout the West Bank, including right through the city of Bethlehem. The wall blocks most sunlight into the 10 guest rooms in the hotel, as a reminder of what it is like for Palestinians who live their lives in the wall’s shadow.

The hotel is near a part of the wall that is painted creatively and beautifully, with many original Banksy works.

The hotel is filled with many powerful pieces of Banksy’s art:

The museum inside the hotel is filled with poignant information about the wall, and about life in Palestine.

Some people have criticized the hotel and accused it of profiting from Palestinian suffering, and of trying to beautify - and thereby normalize - the wall. They say the wall should not be a tourist attraction, when in reality it is part of an oppressive military occupation that crushes the lives of millions of Palestinians every day.

I asked a Palestinian taxi driver in Bethlehem in 2025 what he thought about that criticism. He said, “I don’t care. I don’t care if tourists want to look at the wall, if it’s beautiful or if it’s ugly. I just want to be able to live, to work, and to be able to take care of my family.”

Israel’s leading human rights organization, B’Tselem, recently released a report about the West Bank called The Elimination Project. In B’Tselem’s words, “Israel is systematically killing, torturing, imprisoning and displacing Palestinians in the West Bank on a vast scale. This is a coordinated assault by the military, police, intelligence services, prison authorities and settler militias, all backed by Israel's legal system.”

If you’d like to know more about what is happening now in the West Bank, this interview (September 2026) with the journalist Jasper Nathaniel is one of the clearest explanations I’ve heard (starting at minute 52). Nathaniel is a Jewish-American who was raised in New York. You can follow him on Substack or at infinitejaz.com for powerful independent eyewitness reporting from the West Bank.

Salaam,

Nancy

If this message was forwarded or if you reached it from a link, you can subscribe to receive future Postcards directly.