By Staff Reporter
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At first, it seemed like the kind of shooting that has become all too common in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
A Palestinian aroused suspicions and an Israeli soldier killed him.
But then the deceased was identified as David Ben-Avraham, a Palestinian who had made the almost unheard-of decision to convert from Islam to Judaism years earlier.
His unusual journey had taken him across some of the deepest fault lines in the Middle East and led to some unlikely friendships.
Most Palestinians saw him as an eccentric outcast, while many Israelis treated him as an unwelcome convert to a religion that doesn’t proselytize.
But in his final moments, he was once again viewed as a Palestinian who was in the wrong place, at a time of widespread anger and suspicion.
He was born Sameh Zeitoun in Hebron, home to some 200,000 Palestinians as well as hundreds of Jewish settlers who live in enclaves guarded by Israeli troops.
Zeitoun first made contact with Jewish settlers over a decade ago, asking for help converting to Judaism, according to Noam Arnon, a Jewish settler in Hebron who went on to befriend him.
He said Zeitoun was inspired by family stories about his grandfather protecting Jews when riots erupted in 1929, when the Holy Land was under British colonial rule.
Conversion to other faiths is deeply frowned upon in Islam. In much of the Muslim world, those who do so are cast out of their communities, sometimes violently. Judaism, unlike Islam and Christianity, has no tradition of proselytization.
Such a conversion is even more fraught in Israel and the Palestinian territories, where religion and nationality usually overlap in a decades-old conflict.
Judaism is the faith of most of the soldiers who patrol the territory and the settlers whom Palestinians see as hostile colonizers.
Arnon said most of the settlers from Hebron’s tight-knit community refused to accept Ben-Avraham. Only Arnon and a few others interacted with him, helping with his conversion application papers.
In the year before his conversion, Ben-Avraham was detained by the Palestinian Authority’s intelligence unit in Hebron, according to Arnon and a local Palestinian activist, Issa Amro.
The reason for his arrest was never publicly disclosed, but they believe his conversion and open connections with Israelis attracted unwanted attention.
Palestinians can face arrest or even death if they’re seen as collaborating with Israeli authorities. But few would have suspected Ben-Avraham of being an informant because his story was widely known.
Ben-Avraham told the Israeli news site Times of Israel that he was held for two months in solitary confinement and beaten before being released. Around that time, a video emerged showing him holding what appears to be a Quran and pledging his Muslim faith.
The Israeli army said it’s investigating the killing, but rights groups say soldiers are rarely held accountable in such situations.
Arnon said the shooting was a tragic misunderstanding. Parag, Ben-Avraham’s friend in Jerusalem, accused the soldiers of racial profiling, saying they saw Ben-Avraham for his background and not his unexpected beliefs.
