commentary from Israel & the West Bank
Posts tagged Settler Violence
Did Settlers from Shilo Kill a Sixteen Year Old Palestinian Last Night?
May 14th
Settlers from the extremist settlement of Shilo near Ramallah might have shot killed a 16 year old Palestinian child yesterday evening. Below is a report from the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee:
Aysar alZaben’s body was found in his plot by family members only hours after he was shot. He was found lying dead on the ground, face down, with a bullet hole in his back after being missing since the evening.
According to initial information, alZaben was shot by a settler when tending in his lands between 4:30 and 6:00 pm. At the time, a group of youth from the village scuffled with a settler near the adjacent Route 60. According to the testimonies of some of these youth, they were throwing stones towards Route 60, near a roadblock preventing Palestinian access to the road. At some point, a settler stopped his car and exited it, beginning to shoot live ammunition towards them, which caused them to run away back to the village. Escaping the shots, they were not aware that alZaben, who wasn’t with them and did not participate in the stone throwing, was hit.
As hours passed and alZaben did not return home, his family began looking for him. Having heard the shots earlier in the day, they began calling the Israeli Army, police and Civil Administration trying to locate him, thinking he may have been detained. Eventually, they set out to look for him in their fields, where they knew he had worked in the afternoon. According to his uncle, his lifeless body was found lying face down on the ground with a bullet hole in his back.
Mazra’a alSharqia is an agrarian village of about 5,000, located 15 kilometers Northeast of Ramallah. Despite the village’s location next to Route 60, which runs across the West Bank from north to south and was, in part, built on the Mazra’a's lands, residents have no access to the road, as all the paths leading to and from it have been blocked by Israel.
After being disconnected from Route 60 in recent years, the only road from the area’s villages to Ramallah is a dangerous old agrarian road, which due to the mountainous terrain is often flooded in winters, completely disconnecting the region from the rest of the world.
Last Tuesday, a group of settlers from a nearby settlement have amassed in the Mazra’a alSharqia’s lands and attempted to enter the village after the Israeli government announced it will demolish illegal houses in a number of West Bank Jewish-only settlements. Residents, who suspected the settlers intend on holding a “price-tag” action in the village, confronted them, and manged to ward off the invasion.
They were then attacked by a force of soldiers who shot dozens of rounds of live ammunition and eventually also invaded the village.
Settlers Attack Ta’ayush at Hilltop 18
Jan 24th
“I was shocked that they did it with so much hatred. Thirteen of us arrived there, and we were attacked by four people, who were urged on by others,” -Keren, Ta’ayush Activist.
Settlers Attacking at Hilltop 18
Yesterday masked settler youth attacked Ta’ayush activists at an illegal outpost called Hilltop 18 near the mega settlement of Kiryat Arba in the South Mount Hebron Hills. This is an outpost that Ta’ayush has been monitoring for over one year and Mairav/I have written about in Haaretz. Below is a video of settler demi-god Baruch Marzel attacking Ta’ayush activists at Hilltop 18 last April.
The settlers reacted with pure violence and hatred towards Ta’ayush activists who came to the outpost in order to monitor its construction which has been deemed illegal by international and Israeli law. The right of center mass daily Yediot Aharont has run a typically skewed account of the day’s events. Please follow the link for video form Ta’ayush. (Hebrew Link). I will be posting video of the event when I have it. Notice that no comment is made about how the army/police handled the settlers obivious attacks.
No settlers were arrested or charged with any crime despite the clear violence of the attacks. This attack has come a day after the Sheikh Jarrah protest which has garned international headlines. Unfortunately, this attack will not penetrate mainstream media outlets in the same way despite its obvious news quality. Even the left leaning daily Haaretz is not covering the crimes. Only Yediot because of the papers obvious right wing leanings.
You Know Where it Starts – But You Have No Idea Where It Ends
Aug 2nd
Yesterday there was a shocking and horrifying terrorist attack against the gay and lesbian community that killed 2 young people and injured 15 more at a gay community center in the heart of Tel Aviv. The shooter is still out on the loose so although we don’t know his identity yet, it is easy to speculate it is an extreme rightwing and/or religious person. This is a hate crime and the clearest example of a terrorist attack since the shooter entered an unmarked building where he knew a meeting was taking place and it was in a basement, where the youth had no where to run to. The Israeli media should and must call it that. It doesn’t have to be an Israeli-Palestinian clash for it to warrant the term “terrorist attack.”
At the recent gay pride parade in Jerusalem last month – massively diminished in size and vigor since the 2005 stabbing of several people by a religious Jew – a small but noisy crowd chanted anti-gay slurs and held signs calling gays beasts and perverts. Two prominent figures of the settlement movement that we am unfortunately all too familiar with were there. Itamar Ben-Gvir and Baruch Marzel, both of whom live in the Israeli-occupied Hebron area and have, on repeated occasions, attacked Jewish-Israeli peace activists. In addition to physical violence, we have seen and heard Ben-Gvir verbally abuse Ezra Nawi for being homosexual, calling him a pervert and accusing him of raping little children. This is not isolated. In most places where we have come into contact with settlers, we have heard them equate our leftwing views with homosexuality, calling us disgusting and wimpy liberals who like it “up the ass.”
This morning, just hours after last night’s terror attack in Tel Aviv, the Palestinian Hanoun family of Sheikh Jarrah was physically evicted from their home by Israeli police and in their place, Jewish settler families (comprised mostly of teenage boys resembling classic hilltop youth) entered in their place. It is no coincidence that these events happened so closely together, as clearly the police and settlers who took over these houses in East Jerusalem are aware the media would be dominated by the murders in Tel Aviv.
More >
Settler Violence Makes it to the Evening News
Jul 6th
Hagit Ofran of Peace Now is doing amazing work documenting settlement growth and settler violence. Every time that we have a question about the origin of this settlement or that outpost, Hagit is the first person to call. Peace Now also has an office in the United States that is doing excellent work spreading facts on the ground.
Yesterday, Peace Now was on the ground in the West Bank but this time with a television crew from Israel Channel Two. What they found was what we often encounter, settler violence. Here is the video that channel two produced and was broadcast on the nightly news.
For more information please go to the Peace Now website.
Another Day in the West Bank: Upsetting Video from Safa
Jun 14th
Safa is a village next to the extremist settlement of Bat Ayin. Ta’ayush and other peace organatizaions have recently been spending time with the framers of Safa, helping them work their lands. The settlers of the settlement have increased their violent presence and two weeks ago settlers attacked members of Ta’ayush and flipped the car of Ezra. Yesterday, members of Anarchists Against the Wall and the Palestine Solidarity Project were on the ground again protecting farmers. What followed was yet another instance of excessive force and violence of the IDF on behalf of the settlers.
IDF Concerned Soldiers Joining Settler Revenge Actions
Nov 15th
Posted by Joseph Dana in Unarmed Resistance
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From the excellent blog maintained by Didi Remez comes a report on IDF concerns about settler soldiers. Not a new story but one that is quite ongoing. From Didi’s blog:
Channel Ten TV’s military affairs correspondent reported Monday evening that “these [see video below] pictures give the IDF a serious headache,” because they show soldiers who join rioting settlers and using their IDF-issue weapons. Soldiers manning an observation post of the Etzioni Brigade, which is the Bethlehem brigade, were amazed when their security cameras spotted two of their comrades out there. Corporal Baruch Brandoi of the anti-terror school and Sergeant Nahman Alfasi of the Artillery Corps, both residents of the settlement of Bat Ayin, took their M-16’s and joined their friends on a revenge campaign against the nearby Palestinian village of Hirbat Zafa. The incident took place shortly after the lethal ax attack in Bat Ayin. The settlers wanted revenge. A group of settlers started throwing rocks at the Palestinian village. The Palestinians responded in kind, but then came the two armed soldiers. Brandoi fired 26 rounds and kept firing even after the Palestinians have fled. Alfasi fired 12 rounds. [Full translated transcript here.]
The “headache” was not bad enough, apparently, for the IDF to put some serious effort into disciplining these soldiers, despite the extraordinary evidence.
Presenting the pictures before the court, the military prosecution argued that the two soldiers were under no life threat and thus had no reason to open fire, but was forced to make a plea bargain deal with them, and each of the shooters was handed down a sentence of 21 days in the military prison.
The de facto parallel hierarchies – military and rabbinical — that the many fundamentalist combat soldiers owe allegiance to have been a major problem for IDF operations in the West Bank for some time. One only needs to skim through Yesh Din’s numerous publications in order to understand how blurred the lines between the IDF and settler paramilitaries have become.
The IDF’s patent inability or unwillingness to deal with the problem is evident on a nearly daily basis. Here are two examples just from this morning:
IDF reservists in a unit specializing in West Bank operations publish a petition calling on the unit to desist from participating in outpost evacuations. This is shortly after the a group of new recruits to the unit who staged a protest [!] in the middle of a major basic training ceremony were given slaps on the wrist.
Students at Mercaz Harav Yeshiva find “the subject of killing gentiles, and more specifically Palestinians as part of the ongoing battle against terrorism, particularly relevant for [those] who have served, are presently serving or plan on serving in the IDF.”