The following article by Tony Greenstein describes the stepped up violence directed against Palestinians following the election of Netanyahu and his Far Right allies
POGROMS IN PALESTINE, SETTLER VIOLENCE AND TERROR IS THE PRECURSOR TO DEPORTATION AND TRANSFER
An estimated 40,000 Jews descended on Hebron. Azzeh described how:
“My head started spinning. I ran away so that they would follow me and not come to my house. I didn’t have any strength, and I couldn’t breathe. I fell down and screamed and then I saw soldiers beating my friends while there were settlers above my house,”
Israelis can freely move around Yousef Azzeh Hebron Tel Rumeida while Palestinians are subject to continual limitations. One of Azzeh’s neighbors is Baruch Marzel, the far-right disciple of the neo-Nazi Rabbi Meir Kahane.
Azzeh alerted soldiers, who arrived and whom he showed the stones that were thrown in the yard. Ten minutes after they left, other Israeli civilians appeared and again threw stones at the house. When he walked toward them, they hit him, he said.
Israeli forces stand guard to secure a path for settlers
‘I couldn’t breathe’: A weekend of settler violence in Hebron
According to a soldier, there was no real preparation for dealing with unruly settlers.
“We were warned before the event that it might happen, but we were under pressure, working 24/7. There was no briefing on the matter. [The settlers] felt they could do whatever they wanted. I personally hesitated to handcuff them, or to throw a stun grenade at them, which is a legitimate means [of crowd control]. As a policy, there was no heavy handedness against [the settlers]. I did not see anyone being detained. There were 30,000 people here, so hundreds [participated in the violence]. It’s only a [small] percentage, but they managed to make a real mess.
“There are no clear orders,” the soldier continued.
Ha’aretz described how soldiers in Hebron said they had worked diligently to prepare the situation on the ground for the arrival of hundreds of people. But they had not been briefed to expect violence coming from Jews, which had not been anticipated. One soldier described their problem:
![“I know what to do with the Palestinians,” however he hesitated regarding how to deal with the Jews. “I’ve seen disturbances and clashes in my [military] service, but I had never seen anything like this.” The rioters were not local Jewish residents, he said. “They were newly religious and marginal youth from all over the country,” the soldier claimed.](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOnjJ4DvoRT-lFwq8rsiEYVSyzkk5y0mPVZvcfYeWNhORwMlizM5A3cvVd7huM_EaryBbEP7gxVu4XiX4sBJ62Z-tzNHRw79ODSTHLHnbLuuSjwSacZdq0vC6Pcg0wHPHcVuA5n8eKIiCIFp9XYWdyYHvwjIXWENGflIIoTt6XFgPA6FU7BbqKUVCP7g/s820/Israeli%20settlers%20clash%20with%20Palestinians%20after%20throwing%20stones%20at%20houses%20on%20the%20edge%20of%20the%20Palestinian%20village%20of%20Burin.jpg){kind=link}
Masked men set Palestinian cars on fire in West Bank
In Hebron Palestinians ‘Never Seen Anything Like’ Weekend Violence From Jewish Worshippers Ha’aretz describes in detail the constant attacks and violence from the settlers whilst the army stood by. But when Palestinians defended themselves then they went into action. Which was exactly what happened to Jews subject to pogroms in Europe. Israel has become a mirror image of European anti-Semitism as racists like Starmer and Labour Friends of Israel defend the indefensible.
But this is not a problem of the military alone. It is their political masters who dictate that they must treat Palestinians and Jews differently.
In December last year, Security Minister Omar Bar-Lev condemned, under pressure from the United States, settler violence against the Palestinians. What was the reaction of Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett? A condemnation of the condemnation.
Killed while trying to save A a family from Israeli soldiers
“Settlers in Judea and Samaria have suffered daily from violence and terrorism for decades,” Bennett tweeted: “They serve as a protective wall for all of us and we must protect them in word and a deed.”
The reaction of Interior Minister, Ayelet Shaked, a notorious racist who once called for genocide in Gaza, was even worse. Bar-Lev was ‘confused’ for condemning settler violence.
“The settlers are the salt of the earth,” she wrote on Twitter. “The violence that one needs to be shocked by is the dozens of cases of the throwing of rocks and Molotov cocktails at Jews that occur every day, just because they are Jews,
This is of course a lie. Palestinians throw stones (against heavily armed soldiers!) because of such trivial matters such as home demolitions, arbitrary arrests, armed incursions etc.
This is from the man who called for Jewish women giving birth to be separated from Arab women in case of racial pollution. Now Bezalel is going to be in charge of the ‘civilian’ military administration in the West Bank. Anti-Palestinian violence has now been all but legalised.
Quoting Ha’aretz, the Times of Israel admitted that in just 10 days in October there were 100 settler attacks on Palestinians.
In recent weeks, the security establishment has identified an alarming increase in acts of violence by settlers throughout the West Bank,”
This massive upsurge in violence against Palestinians has a purpose. It isn’t merely random. The aim is to force Palestinians off the land by burning olive groves and attacking those who pick the fruit. In almost every case where there were Israeli soldiers they stood by and watched if not encouraged the settlers.
Masked men throw stones at Palestinians and activists in West Bank village
This violence and intimidation is widely supported because as the ‘moderate’ ‘centrist’ former Prime Minister Yair Lapid said,
My principle says maximum Jews on maximum land with maximum security and with minimum Palestinians.”
Lapid was praised by Western leaders for supporting a Palestinian state when any such state would be demilitarised, lacking any sovereignty and subject to Israeli army incursions. But even this parody of a Bantustan is not going to come into existence.
In an article There’s Only One Way to Describe This Settler Attack: A Pogrom Gideon Levy described how on November 3
A Palestinian family was harvesting olives when a group of settlers swooped down and attacked them with clubs, pipes and stones. Five members of the family were hospitalized, including the 65-year-old father of the household and one of his sons, whose shattered leg will need costly, ongoing rehab. The 8-year-old grandson hid under the family’s pickup
Entering the home of the Mashani family in the small town of Al-Shuyukh, north of Hebron in the West Bank, is like paying a visit to a rehabilitation ward in a hospital. Almost every member of the family is hurt, some remain in bandages, a few are limping and all of them have wounds to show us – some of them quite serious.
Needless to say the Israeli Police have done nothing. But if the roles were reversed the Palestinian attackers would have been arrested, probably beaten up, languishing indefinitely in a cell. And then there are some people who claim that Zionism is not racist.
In a particularly egregious case of a settler attack, a Palestinian man had both arms broken and then the army arrested him!
Hafez Huraini, 52, was working on his family’s land with his son Muhammad on the outskirts of their village of at-Tuwani in Masafer Yatta, in the southern occupied West Bank, when a group of armed Israeli settlers from the nearby Havat Ma’on outpost attacked them.
“Five settlers attacked them, some had guns, at least one of them had an M16 rifle, and the others were carrying metal pipes. One of the settlers started hitting them with the metal pipe, breaking my dad’s left arm,”
Jewish Settlers break both my father’s arms and then the army arrest him.
Sami Huraini, 24, Hafez’s son, recounted to Mondoweiss.
Mohammed Mashani, with his son Tair
“This is a clear representation of the Apartheid system that we live under,” Sami said.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2M5X-qav8JI&t=5s
Human rights groups, like B’Tselem, report that the army frequently colludes with settlers in their attacks on Palestinians. “Instead of taking preventive action, the Israeli authorities aid and abet the settlers in harming Palestinians and using their land,” the group said.
According to B’Tselem, since 2020, the group has documented 757 incidents of settler violence against Palestinians and their property.
In the rare case that an investigation is opened into settler violence against Palestinians, Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights group that documents incidents of settler violence in the West Bank, says the vast majority of those investigations are closed.
The group says that 92% of investigations into ideological crimes against Palestinians are closed with no indictment filed.
‘It was like a war zone’
Around the same time that Hafez Huraini was detained and evacuated in an ambulance, Israeli forces arrested two other Palestinians from Masafer Yatta who are still in custody.
Shortly after, dozens more Israeli troops raided the village of at-Tuwani, and began a massive detention operation that would last for hours into the early morning
“This is all part of their ethnic cleansing plans, and their efforts to scare us, intimidate us, and coerce us out of our homes,” Sami said, referring to Israeli plans to force over 1,000 Palestinians in Masafer Yatta out of their homes to make way for an Israeli firing zone.
Hebron settlers attack girl injured by stone
“The settlers can live happily while they attack us, and while the soldiers attack us. They want to threaten us, and scare us so we stop resisting their plans,” Sami said. “But our willpower is strong.”
As of Tuesday night local time, Israeli forces were raiding at-Tuwani for the second night in a row, throwing tear gas and sound bombs at peoples homes.
10 days later, after a video emerged, the military court in Ofer released Hafez with stringent conditions, including staying away from his own land. No such conditions were imposed on the settlers who attacked him because, of course, they were never arrested. See
Israeli settlers attacked a Palestinian man, breaking both his arms. Then the army arrested him.
Settler invasion of Ramallah exposes PA impotence
You may remember how the ‘bubble’ of Ramallah where the PA is based was held up by Israel and the PA itself as a showcase of how economic independence can lead to an improvement in the situation of the Palestinians.
Two boys held up by Israeli soldiers outside their homes, in Ramallah’s Al-Tireh neighborhood
Yet on October 13 Israel demonstrated what it thought of its tame Palestinian lapdog. Israeli settlers stormed the Al-Tireh neighborhood in Ramallah, conductingTalmudic prayers and ceremonies. This practice, among other strategies, has been commonly employed by religious settlers as a means of providing the Israeli Supreme Court with legal grounds to take over Palestinian land. The invasion of Ramallah neighborhoods by these settlers indicates that the settler movement has become emboldened in its goal of accelerating the ethnic cleansing of Palestine,
Israeli troops in Jenin on September 28
Palestinians carry the body of Raafat Issa.
Below are just some of the many stories on the increasing violence and terror of the settlers and their protectors in the Israeli army. With the advent of the new far-Right coalition of Netanyahu this situation can only get worse as Israel is determined to ensure that Area C is ethnically cleansed and that Palestinians living there are driven off the land.
A 12-year-old Boy Goes Out to Sell Water at an Intersection, and Is Shot Dead
Masked Men Throw Stones at Palestinians, Burn Cars as Israeli Soldiers Stand By
Palestinian worker killed by Israeli forces in Jenin becomes “the martyr of daily bread”
‘You Gave an Order to Search a Palestinian Woman’s Private Parts.’ ‘That’s Irrelevant’
Israel’s Relentless War against the Children of Palestine
26.11.22
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also see:-
Turbocharging Zionist colonialism – Moshe Machover, Weekly Worker
Nablus mountain if fire – centre of a new Palestinian resistance – Mary McGregor, Heckle
Israeli states steps up expulsion of Palestinians – B’Tselem: the Israeli Centre for Human Rights