13 mar 2011
By Nasser Lahham
The Israeli media response to the murder of five Israeli settlers in Itamar was hasty, reflecting confusion and a failure to adequately understand the situation in the West Bank.
Much of the coverage of the killings focused on Palestinians, in a dehumanizing editorial line which took no account of the recent attacks perpetrated by settlers against Palestinians.
Nowhere did the reports note that Palestinians have been decrying the danger of the settlement project for years.
For Palestinians and for Israelis, we say, settlements represent the antithesis of a peaceful solution.
Israel's most popular daily paper, Yedioth Ahronoth, ran a front page story calling the killers "Human beasts" in the sub-heading that ran beneath the victims' photographs.
It was a knee-jerk reaction, an attempt by the editor-in-chief to incite the public, and a dehumanizing decision.
In its coverage of the grisly events, the paper did not once mention the mobs of settlers that have attacked Palestinians in the streets, in their villages and on their farmland, killing two and injuring more than a dozen last month alone.
The news report grossly misjudged the situation in the West Bank, and ignored the rage of Palestinians to the continuation of the settlement project. Palestinians were simply vilified, with intimations that we are "beasts" who slaughter children.
Palestinians, the report says, should be treated as the baby-killers they are, and its up to the settlers and their soldiers to deal with them.
In Ma’ariv, another right-of-center daily newspaper, coverage of the killings shared the front page with the fallout of the earthquake in Japan, splashing the headlines with the word "massacre."
The leftist daily Haaretz lead with the earthquake, leaving a report on the killings to the sixth and seventh pages.
All placed blame for the deaths on Palestinian shoulders. None asked questions about why the settlers were in the West Bank to start with, or where the almost 200,000 Israeli police and soldiers charged with enforcing the occupation were when the attack happened.
Settlements by nature set up an unspeakably dangerous situation, and all sides have failed to assess it.
The Israeli media response to the murder of five Israeli settlers in Itamar was hasty, reflecting confusion and a failure to adequately understand the situation in the West Bank.
Much of the coverage of the killings focused on Palestinians, in a dehumanizing editorial line which took no account of the recent attacks perpetrated by settlers against Palestinians.
Nowhere did the reports note that Palestinians have been decrying the danger of the settlement project for years.
For Palestinians and for Israelis, we say, settlements represent the antithesis of a peaceful solution.
Israel's most popular daily paper, Yedioth Ahronoth, ran a front page story calling the killers "Human beasts" in the sub-heading that ran beneath the victims' photographs.
It was a knee-jerk reaction, an attempt by the editor-in-chief to incite the public, and a dehumanizing decision.
In its coverage of the grisly events, the paper did not once mention the mobs of settlers that have attacked Palestinians in the streets, in their villages and on their farmland, killing two and injuring more than a dozen last month alone.
The news report grossly misjudged the situation in the West Bank, and ignored the rage of Palestinians to the continuation of the settlement project. Palestinians were simply vilified, with intimations that we are "beasts" who slaughter children.
Palestinians, the report says, should be treated as the baby-killers they are, and its up to the settlers and their soldiers to deal with them.
In Ma’ariv, another right-of-center daily newspaper, coverage of the killings shared the front page with the fallout of the earthquake in Japan, splashing the headlines with the word "massacre."
The leftist daily Haaretz lead with the earthquake, leaving a report on the killings to the sixth and seventh pages.
All placed blame for the deaths on Palestinian shoulders. None asked questions about why the settlers were in the West Bank to start with, or where the almost 200,000 Israeli police and soldiers charged with enforcing the occupation were when the attack happened.
Settlements by nature set up an unspeakably dangerous situation, and all sides have failed to assess it.
The Palestinian authority security militias summoned many Palestinian citizens affiliated with Hamas Movement on Saturday after the killing of five Jewish settlers from Itamar settlement in Nablus city.
Local sources stated that dozens of summonses were handed to Hamas members in different West Bank cities, mostly in Jenin.
De facto president Mahmoud Abbas held last night an emergency meeting with his security officers and a number of Fatah officials after Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu asked him to help arrest the perpetrators.
In another context, ex-detainees released from PA jails said their jailers and interrogators especially from the preventive security discarded large quantities of documents and files through burning them.
Prisoners released from detention centers of the preventive security apparatus affirmed they saw through their blindfolds or holes from their cells officers setting fire to thousands of papers after removing them from files.
The PA security apparatuses seem to have taken such step to avoid what happened to Egyptian security officials and politicians following the popular revolution in their country and to prevent the leaking of such papers to the media.
In a separate incident, a senior PA intelligence officer blocked the southwestern entrance to Ramallah city separating seven of its villages from the occupied cities of Ramle and Jerusalem.
Officer Jamal Al-Amwasi used sand barriers to block the road forcing thousands of Palestinian citizens to use remote bypasses patrolled by Israeli troops in order to reach Ramallah.
The officer exploited his post and acted individually without considering the public interest because he only does not want vehicles to pass near his house, Palestinian citizens said.
Haneyya gov't warns of exploiting Itamar incident to escalate aggression
The Palestinian government of Ismail Haneyya has warned the Israeli occupation authority of exploiting the Itamar attack in political blackmail.
Taher Al-Nunu, the government's spokesman, said in a press release late on Saturday night that it was following with concern the Israeli escalation against the Palestinian people and the attempt to involve the Gaza Strip in the murder crime in Itamar in a bid to justify aggression on the Strip.
He said that Hamas and the Palestinian resistance have denied any involvement in the Itamar murders, adding that his government did not rule out an act of homicide.
High alert as settlers commend new building
Israeli police were on high alert on Sunday for fear of revenge attacks after the brutal stabbing of five settlers, including a three-month-old baby, killed in their beds at the weekend.
The Friday night attack, which saw three children and their parents murdered in a frenzied assault in their home in Itamar settlement near Nablus, sparked shock and anger in Israel, and prompted the government to approve the construction of hundreds of new settler homes.
"We have raised our level of alert in order to be ready for any disturbances on Sunday, the day in which the victims will be buried in Jerusalem," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP.
An army spokesman said troops deployed throughout the West Bank had also been ordered "to be vigilant" for any attempted attacks in revenge for the grisly killings, pictures of which were widely circulated by the settler leadership.
The family were laid to rest on Sunday afternoon, as thousands of shocked and angry mourners flocked to Jerusalem for the funerals.
Ahead of the burial, the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said ministers had approved construction of "several hundred housing units within the settlement blocs" of Gush Etzion, Maale Adumim, Ariel and Kiryat Sefer.
All four are among the biggest settlement blocs in the West Bank.
The move was welcomed by the Yesha settlers' council, but prompted an angry denunciation from the Palestinian Authority.
"This decision by the government is a small step in the right direction," a Yesha statement said.
"It is deeply troubling that it requires the murder of children in the arms of their parents to achieve such an objective," it said.
But chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat lashed out, telling AFP the Palestinian Authority "strongly condemns the decision of the Israeli government to speed up and increase the building of settlements."
UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Robert Serry also expressed concern over the announcement.
Speaking with Ma'an, Serry's spokesman Richard Miron said the official was "concerned after seeing media reports announcing 500 new housing units in the occupied West Bank. Settlement activity is illegal and such a decision is not conducive to efforts to resume negotiations and achieve a negotiated Israeli-Palestinian peace."
The decision was taken by ministers late on Saturday, less than 24 hours after the Itamar stabbing in which five members of the Fogel family were killed: three-month-old Hadas, four-year-old Elad, Yoav, 11, and their parents Udi and Ruthie.
Grisly pictures from the scene released by the settler leadership on Sunday showed the victims lying on blood-spattered beds, each one with multiple stab wounds.
Overnight, Palestinian witnesses reported a series of confrontations with angry settlers in and around the northern West Bank city of Nablus.
In Burin, five kilometers west of Itamar, locals said settlers had entered the village overnight, throwing stones and setting fire to one of the houses there.
Israeli troops quickly arrived at the scene and sent the settlers away, declaring the village a closed military zone, they said.
Troops were still operating in the nearby village of Awarta, which lies immediately west of Itamar, where they had arrested 20 people on Saturday after conducting house-to-house searches, Palestinian security sources said.
In the southern West Bank, witnesses said settlers had thrown stones at cars and houses in and around the southern city of Hebron, smashing the windshields of at least four cars, and had also stoned a fire engine in the southern town of Yatta.
Israel troops also clashed with Palestinians after they dispersed a group of settlers lobbing stones in Beit Ummar near Hebron.
The Nablus area is known for the ongoing friction between Jewish settlers and Palestinian residents, with tensions often disintegrating into clashes with rocks or even gunfire.
Netanyahu on Saturday expressed "deep outrage" over the Itamar attack but also called for restraint.
"Despite all the awful pain, I call upon all Israelis to act responsibly, with restraint, and not to take the law into their own hands," the Israeli premier said.
Local sources stated that dozens of summonses were handed to Hamas members in different West Bank cities, mostly in Jenin.
De facto president Mahmoud Abbas held last night an emergency meeting with his security officers and a number of Fatah officials after Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu asked him to help arrest the perpetrators.
In another context, ex-detainees released from PA jails said their jailers and interrogators especially from the preventive security discarded large quantities of documents and files through burning them.
Prisoners released from detention centers of the preventive security apparatus affirmed they saw through their blindfolds or holes from their cells officers setting fire to thousands of papers after removing them from files.
The PA security apparatuses seem to have taken such step to avoid what happened to Egyptian security officials and politicians following the popular revolution in their country and to prevent the leaking of such papers to the media.
In a separate incident, a senior PA intelligence officer blocked the southwestern entrance to Ramallah city separating seven of its villages from the occupied cities of Ramle and Jerusalem.
Officer Jamal Al-Amwasi used sand barriers to block the road forcing thousands of Palestinian citizens to use remote bypasses patrolled by Israeli troops in order to reach Ramallah.
The officer exploited his post and acted individually without considering the public interest because he only does not want vehicles to pass near his house, Palestinian citizens said.
Haneyya gov't warns of exploiting Itamar incident to escalate aggression
The Palestinian government of Ismail Haneyya has warned the Israeli occupation authority of exploiting the Itamar attack in political blackmail.
Taher Al-Nunu, the government's spokesman, said in a press release late on Saturday night that it was following with concern the Israeli escalation against the Palestinian people and the attempt to involve the Gaza Strip in the murder crime in Itamar in a bid to justify aggression on the Strip.
He said that Hamas and the Palestinian resistance have denied any involvement in the Itamar murders, adding that his government did not rule out an act of homicide.
High alert as settlers commend new building
Israeli police were on high alert on Sunday for fear of revenge attacks after the brutal stabbing of five settlers, including a three-month-old baby, killed in their beds at the weekend.
The Friday night attack, which saw three children and their parents murdered in a frenzied assault in their home in Itamar settlement near Nablus, sparked shock and anger in Israel, and prompted the government to approve the construction of hundreds of new settler homes.
"We have raised our level of alert in order to be ready for any disturbances on Sunday, the day in which the victims will be buried in Jerusalem," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP.
An army spokesman said troops deployed throughout the West Bank had also been ordered "to be vigilant" for any attempted attacks in revenge for the grisly killings, pictures of which were widely circulated by the settler leadership.
The family were laid to rest on Sunday afternoon, as thousands of shocked and angry mourners flocked to Jerusalem for the funerals.
Ahead of the burial, the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said ministers had approved construction of "several hundred housing units within the settlement blocs" of Gush Etzion, Maale Adumim, Ariel and Kiryat Sefer.
All four are among the biggest settlement blocs in the West Bank.
The move was welcomed by the Yesha settlers' council, but prompted an angry denunciation from the Palestinian Authority.
"This decision by the government is a small step in the right direction," a Yesha statement said.
"It is deeply troubling that it requires the murder of children in the arms of their parents to achieve such an objective," it said.
But chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat lashed out, telling AFP the Palestinian Authority "strongly condemns the decision of the Israeli government to speed up and increase the building of settlements."
UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Robert Serry also expressed concern over the announcement.
Speaking with Ma'an, Serry's spokesman Richard Miron said the official was "concerned after seeing media reports announcing 500 new housing units in the occupied West Bank. Settlement activity is illegal and such a decision is not conducive to efforts to resume negotiations and achieve a negotiated Israeli-Palestinian peace."
The decision was taken by ministers late on Saturday, less than 24 hours after the Itamar stabbing in which five members of the Fogel family were killed: three-month-old Hadas, four-year-old Elad, Yoav, 11, and their parents Udi and Ruthie.
Grisly pictures from the scene released by the settler leadership on Sunday showed the victims lying on blood-spattered beds, each one with multiple stab wounds.
Overnight, Palestinian witnesses reported a series of confrontations with angry settlers in and around the northern West Bank city of Nablus.
In Burin, five kilometers west of Itamar, locals said settlers had entered the village overnight, throwing stones and setting fire to one of the houses there.
Israeli troops quickly arrived at the scene and sent the settlers away, declaring the village a closed military zone, they said.
Troops were still operating in the nearby village of Awarta, which lies immediately west of Itamar, where they had arrested 20 people on Saturday after conducting house-to-house searches, Palestinian security sources said.
In the southern West Bank, witnesses said settlers had thrown stones at cars and houses in and around the southern city of Hebron, smashing the windshields of at least four cars, and had also stoned a fire engine in the southern town of Yatta.
Israel troops also clashed with Palestinians after they dispersed a group of settlers lobbing stones in Beit Ummar near Hebron.
The Nablus area is known for the ongoing friction between Jewish settlers and Palestinian residents, with tensions often disintegrating into clashes with rocks or even gunfire.
Netanyahu on Saturday expressed "deep outrage" over the Itamar attack but also called for restraint.
"Despite all the awful pain, I call upon all Israelis to act responsibly, with restraint, and not to take the law into their own hands," the Israeli premier said.
The Israeli Cabinet has announced approval for the construction of hundreds of new houses in the West Bank to be built for Jewish settlers.
The move came in response to the killing of five Jewish settlers in the Itamar settlement near Nablus in the northern West Bank.
The units are set to be built in the settlements of Gush Etzion, north of Al-Khalil, Maale Adumim, in occupied Jerusalem and Karyat Sefer, west of Ramallah.
A family of five settlers were stabbed to death on Friday in the Itamar settlement drawing heavy response by the Israel occupation government which blamed the attack on Palestinians.
Jewish settlers under military protection carry out daily attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank from settlements deemed illegal by the UN.
The move came in response to the killing of five Jewish settlers in the Itamar settlement near Nablus in the northern West Bank.
The units are set to be built in the settlements of Gush Etzion, north of Al-Khalil, Maale Adumim, in occupied Jerusalem and Karyat Sefer, west of Ramallah.
A family of five settlers were stabbed to death on Friday in the Itamar settlement drawing heavy response by the Israel occupation government which blamed the attack on Palestinians.
Jewish settlers under military protection carry out daily attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank from settlements deemed illegal by the UN.
Hundreds of armed Jewish settlers attacked at midnight Saturday Palestinian homes in Hawara village, south of Nablus city.
Eyewitnesses told the Palestinian information center (PIC) that the settlers went on the rampage through the villages damaging property, assaulting residents, burning cars and throwing stones at everything.
Consequently, the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) closed road 60 between Ramallah and Nablus.
The PIC reporter said the villagers in Hawara and nearby villages used the speakers of mosques to urge the Palestinians to defend their homes and property against settlers' attacks, which were described as the most violent since a long time.
Hundreds of villagers stood up for themselves using stones and sticks to confront the armed settlers who were escorted by some Israeli troops. The size of damage and injuries is still unknown.
Other extremist settlers attacked Palestinian cars passing near Ofer settlement, east of Ramallah, on the road between Nablus and occupied Jerusalem.
The cities of Bethlehem and Al-Khalil also witnessed similar savage attacks by Jewish settlers.
A group of settlers under military protection attacked on Saturday morning Palestinian homes near Rumeida neighborhood in Al-Khalil city.
Samaan Abu Haikal said that armed settlers hurled stones at his daughters and threatened Palestinians that they would be shot dead if they left their homes.
In the Laban souk near Ibrahimi Mosque, other settlers severely beat a Palestinian citizen called Sufiyan Abu Asneineh as he was on his way to the Mosque for prayer.
A number of female settlers also marched in the heart of Al-Khalil city chanting racist slurs against Arabs and threatening them with death.
Settlers from Kiryat Arba distributed leaflets in Arabic language saying that they would kill Arabs to avenge the killing of settlers in Nablus.
Resheq: Itamar attack could be homicide
Political bureau member of Hamas Ezzet Al-Resheq has said that his movement was not involved in the Itamar attack near Nablus.
He affirmed in a statement late Saturday that Hamas and other Palestinian resistance factions do not target children.
The Hamas leader did not rule out the possibility that the attack was carried out by other settlers similar to what happened in previous criminal attacks that shook Israeli society.
Eyewitnesses told the Palestinian information center (PIC) that the settlers went on the rampage through the villages damaging property, assaulting residents, burning cars and throwing stones at everything.
Consequently, the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) closed road 60 between Ramallah and Nablus.
The PIC reporter said the villagers in Hawara and nearby villages used the speakers of mosques to urge the Palestinians to defend their homes and property against settlers' attacks, which were described as the most violent since a long time.
Hundreds of villagers stood up for themselves using stones and sticks to confront the armed settlers who were escorted by some Israeli troops. The size of damage and injuries is still unknown.
Other extremist settlers attacked Palestinian cars passing near Ofer settlement, east of Ramallah, on the road between Nablus and occupied Jerusalem.
The cities of Bethlehem and Al-Khalil also witnessed similar savage attacks by Jewish settlers.
A group of settlers under military protection attacked on Saturday morning Palestinian homes near Rumeida neighborhood in Al-Khalil city.
Samaan Abu Haikal said that armed settlers hurled stones at his daughters and threatened Palestinians that they would be shot dead if they left their homes.
In the Laban souk near Ibrahimi Mosque, other settlers severely beat a Palestinian citizen called Sufiyan Abu Asneineh as he was on his way to the Mosque for prayer.
A number of female settlers also marched in the heart of Al-Khalil city chanting racist slurs against Arabs and threatening them with death.
Settlers from Kiryat Arba distributed leaflets in Arabic language saying that they would kill Arabs to avenge the killing of settlers in Nablus.
Resheq: Itamar attack could be homicide
Political bureau member of Hamas Ezzet Al-Resheq has said that his movement was not involved in the Itamar attack near Nablus.
He affirmed in a statement late Saturday that Hamas and other Palestinian resistance factions do not target children.
The Hamas leader did not rule out the possibility that the attack was carried out by other settlers similar to what happened in previous criminal attacks that shook Israeli society.
Israeli settlers threw Molotov cocktails at Palestinian civilian vehicles traveling in the northern West Bank Sunday evening, and set fire to cars at a nearby garage, witnesses said.
The incidents took place at the Yitzhar junction near the illegal Israeli settlement of the same name, along the Huwwara road leading in and out of Nablus.
Settlers also threw stones, breaking the glass of at least one car window, witnesses reported.
"On their way back from the funeral procession of the settlers who were killed Friday, they threw stones and Molotov cocktails," one witness said, adding that Molotov cocktails thrown at a scrap yard outside a garage caused a fire to start, consuming at least five scrap vehicles.
On Saturday morning, hours after five members of a settler family were found killed in the Itamar settlement near Nablus, residents of nearby Huwwara said they were harassed by settlers, who tried to enter Palestinian homes in the eastern side of the town.
Town officials called on residents to gather in the area to protect the homes in a call over the loudspeakers of the local mosque to defend the area.
Other parts of the West Bank saw settler vandalism, with mobs of settlers said to have been roving in the north and southern West Bank. Ammar Abu Akar said he was driving home to Bethlehem with his family when settlers surrounded the car.
"Some 200 extremist settlers armed with guns, clubs, and knives obstructed our car on the road from Hebron to Bethlehem. We tried to run away, but they hurled stones at the car smashing its windshields," he said.
Settler attacks against Palestinians escalate
As the Shabbat ended Saturday evening, Israeli settlers raided Palestinian villages and towns across the West Bank, injuring several Palestinians.
The raids followed the killing of a family of five Israelis in Itamar settlement in Nablus overnight Friday. A three-month-old baby Hadas, Elad, 4, Yoav, 11 and their parents Udi and Ruthie were all stabbed to death in their home.
During the day settlers stormed several villages in Nablus, including Burin and Huwwara, entering homes and harassing residents. Settlers handed out leaflets threatening the lives of villagers in Beitillu, near Ramallah, and threw rocks at Palestinian cars in Hebron.
Saturday evening, five members of the Abu Akar family were attacked by settlers as they drove back from Hebron to their home in Bethlehem in the southern West Bank.
"Some 200 extremist settlers armed with guns, clubs, and knives obstructed our car on the road from Hebron to Bethlehem. We tried to run away, but they hurled stones at the car smashing its windshields.
"My brother-in-law, the driver, sustained serious wounds and was forced to pull over. I tried to step out and take the wheel but they attacked me with clubs. Israeli forces who were watching did nothing to stop them," Ammar Abu Akar told Ma`an.
He said he sustained bruises in the back and shoulders while his brother-in-law, 53-year-old Nidhal Abu Akar, sustained serious head injuries. Ammar's father and two of his uncles, Muhammad and Khalil Abu Akar, were also injured by stones and shattered glass.
Ammar said the family narrowly escaped death after one of them managed to take control of the car and sped away to a hilltop through a dirt road.
In Hebron, settlers set fire to a Palestinian car in Tel Rumeida. Other mobs of settlers attacked Palestinian cars and homes on the main road in Beit Ummar and the nearby Al-Arrub refugee camp.
Beit Ummar popular committee spokesman Muhammad Ayyad Awad said a group of settlers opened fire and hurled stones at Palestinian homes. Meanwhile, he added, Israeli soldiers fired tear gas canisters near the homes.
In the village of Nabi Salih west of Ramallah, settlers tried to enter Palestinian homes near the main street, but were stopped by residents. Locals set fire to used tires at the village entrance and stationed themselves behind them to defend the village.
Residents said Israeli forces stormed the village firing live ammunition, rubber-coated steel bullets and tear gas canisters. Witnesses said Israeli forces entered the village to retrieve the remains of an unmanned Israeli drone which crashed in the area.
In the northern and the central West Bank, Israeli settlers hurled stones at Palestinians driving on the main road between Jerusalem and Nablus near the Israeli settlements of Ofra and Bet El. No injuries have been reported.
Israeli soldiers intervened and scuffled with the settlers trying to move them back, onlookers said.
Za'tara checkpoint south of Nablus was closed, and the main road between Nablus and Qalqiliya was shut down after dozens of settlers attacked Palestinian cars. The Qalandia checkpoint between Ramallah and Jerusalem was closed in both directions for "security reasons," Israeli authorities said.
Local sources in Nablus told Ma`an that over 100 settlers stormed shops and homes in the northern West Bank village of Huwwara south of Nablus.
Group denies involvement in settler attack
Leaders of an armed faction calling itself "Imad Mughniyya Group" on Sunday denied involvement in the killing of five Israelis from the same family in Itamar settlement overnight Friday.
West Bank affiliates of the group issued a statement Saturday claiming responsibility for the attack. But the faction's leadership in Gaza said it the group was not responsible, and that the brigade's struggle was for "freedom and dignity not killing and bloodshed."
The resistance had abandoned many attacks in the past due to the presence of children, the group said in a statement Sunday.
Israeli authorities have dismissed statements from the group in the past, as it has claimed responsibility for other operations that may have been the work of others. It is believed to be linked to Fatah.
So far, no other faction has claimed the attack, and the perpetrators remain unidentified.
The incidents took place at the Yitzhar junction near the illegal Israeli settlement of the same name, along the Huwwara road leading in and out of Nablus.
Settlers also threw stones, breaking the glass of at least one car window, witnesses reported.
"On their way back from the funeral procession of the settlers who were killed Friday, they threw stones and Molotov cocktails," one witness said, adding that Molotov cocktails thrown at a scrap yard outside a garage caused a fire to start, consuming at least five scrap vehicles.
On Saturday morning, hours after five members of a settler family were found killed in the Itamar settlement near Nablus, residents of nearby Huwwara said they were harassed by settlers, who tried to enter Palestinian homes in the eastern side of the town.
Town officials called on residents to gather in the area to protect the homes in a call over the loudspeakers of the local mosque to defend the area.
Other parts of the West Bank saw settler vandalism, with mobs of settlers said to have been roving in the north and southern West Bank. Ammar Abu Akar said he was driving home to Bethlehem with his family when settlers surrounded the car.
"Some 200 extremist settlers armed with guns, clubs, and knives obstructed our car on the road from Hebron to Bethlehem. We tried to run away, but they hurled stones at the car smashing its windshields," he said.
Settler attacks against Palestinians escalate
As the Shabbat ended Saturday evening, Israeli settlers raided Palestinian villages and towns across the West Bank, injuring several Palestinians.
The raids followed the killing of a family of five Israelis in Itamar settlement in Nablus overnight Friday. A three-month-old baby Hadas, Elad, 4, Yoav, 11 and their parents Udi and Ruthie were all stabbed to death in their home.
During the day settlers stormed several villages in Nablus, including Burin and Huwwara, entering homes and harassing residents. Settlers handed out leaflets threatening the lives of villagers in Beitillu, near Ramallah, and threw rocks at Palestinian cars in Hebron.
Saturday evening, five members of the Abu Akar family were attacked by settlers as they drove back from Hebron to their home in Bethlehem in the southern West Bank.
"Some 200 extremist settlers armed with guns, clubs, and knives obstructed our car on the road from Hebron to Bethlehem. We tried to run away, but they hurled stones at the car smashing its windshields.
"My brother-in-law, the driver, sustained serious wounds and was forced to pull over. I tried to step out and take the wheel but they attacked me with clubs. Israeli forces who were watching did nothing to stop them," Ammar Abu Akar told Ma`an.
He said he sustained bruises in the back and shoulders while his brother-in-law, 53-year-old Nidhal Abu Akar, sustained serious head injuries. Ammar's father and two of his uncles, Muhammad and Khalil Abu Akar, were also injured by stones and shattered glass.
Ammar said the family narrowly escaped death after one of them managed to take control of the car and sped away to a hilltop through a dirt road.
In Hebron, settlers set fire to a Palestinian car in Tel Rumeida. Other mobs of settlers attacked Palestinian cars and homes on the main road in Beit Ummar and the nearby Al-Arrub refugee camp.
Beit Ummar popular committee spokesman Muhammad Ayyad Awad said a group of settlers opened fire and hurled stones at Palestinian homes. Meanwhile, he added, Israeli soldiers fired tear gas canisters near the homes.
In the village of Nabi Salih west of Ramallah, settlers tried to enter Palestinian homes near the main street, but were stopped by residents. Locals set fire to used tires at the village entrance and stationed themselves behind them to defend the village.
Residents said Israeli forces stormed the village firing live ammunition, rubber-coated steel bullets and tear gas canisters. Witnesses said Israeli forces entered the village to retrieve the remains of an unmanned Israeli drone which crashed in the area.
In the northern and the central West Bank, Israeli settlers hurled stones at Palestinians driving on the main road between Jerusalem and Nablus near the Israeli settlements of Ofra and Bet El. No injuries have been reported.
Israeli soldiers intervened and scuffled with the settlers trying to move them back, onlookers said.
Za'tara checkpoint south of Nablus was closed, and the main road between Nablus and Qalqiliya was shut down after dozens of settlers attacked Palestinian cars. The Qalandia checkpoint between Ramallah and Jerusalem was closed in both directions for "security reasons," Israeli authorities said.
Local sources in Nablus told Ma`an that over 100 settlers stormed shops and homes in the northern West Bank village of Huwwara south of Nablus.
Group denies involvement in settler attack
Leaders of an armed faction calling itself "Imad Mughniyya Group" on Sunday denied involvement in the killing of five Israelis from the same family in Itamar settlement overnight Friday.
West Bank affiliates of the group issued a statement Saturday claiming responsibility for the attack. But the faction's leadership in Gaza said it the group was not responsible, and that the brigade's struggle was for "freedom and dignity not killing and bloodshed."
The resistance had abandoned many attacks in the past due to the presence of children, the group said in a statement Sunday.
Israeli authorities have dismissed statements from the group in the past, as it has claimed responsibility for other operations that may have been the work of others. It is believed to be linked to Fatah.
So far, no other faction has claimed the attack, and the perpetrators remain unidentified.
Israeli analysts have speculated that Saturday's brutal attack in a Nablus settlement was carried out by fighters affiliated to Hamas.
Early Saturday morning, a three-month old baby girl, two children aged three and 11, and their parents were stabbed to death in their home in Itamar settlement.
Interviewed on Israeli TV, military experts said Hamas was likely to be involved in the attack. The Islamist group regarded Nablus as one of its bases, and had active cells in the northern West Bank city, the analysts said.
Hebrew news sites said private Israeli security companies hired to protect the settlement had neglected their duties. According to reports, the alarm on the electric fence surrounding the settlement was activated several times. When the guards did not see any infiltrators in the area, they assumed there was a technical malfunction and turned off the alarm system, news reports said.
Meanwhile, an Israeli police correspondent told Israel's Channel 2 that police have raised the alert level in all Israeli cities fearing further attacks, particularly in Jerusalem. Concerns were heightened by the upcoming Jewish festival of Purim, due to begin Friday, as well as reports of Palestinian protests calling for national unity over the next week, the correspondent said.
He said Israeli police have deployed large forces on the streets of most Israeli cities.
Channel 2's military correspondent Ronny Daniel said the army continued to raid villages around Itamar settlement and that 20 Palestinians had been arrested.
The report showed images of drones hovering over the area.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would "act vigorously to defend the Israeli population and to punish the murderers,"
President Mahmoud Abbas telephoned Netanyahu to express his regret over the murders. The Israeli premier accused the Palestinian Authority of incitement against Israel, according to a statement from Netanyahu's office
"I expect you to stop the incitement in schools, textbooks and mosques and for you to educate your children for peace as we are doing. Murdering children in their sleep is murder for its own sake," he told Abbas.
Abbas denounced "all violence against civilians, whatever the motive" in a statement.
"I am against acts of vengeance. Violence begets violence," the president added.
Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said his government rejected violence without exception.
"An infant, two children and their parents were the victims, and as we have always rejected violence against our people, we reject it against others and we condemn it."
On Saturday evening, Netanyahu demanded a stronger condemnation of the attack from the PA.
"I am disappointed by the weak and mumbled statements. This is not how one condemns terrorism. This is not how one fights terrorism," he said.
He again accused the PA of "daily incitement" in schools, mosques and the media.
"The time has come to stop this double-talk in which the Palestinian Authority outwardly talks peace, and allows and sometimes leads incitement at home."
The only group to claim the attack has been an armed faction calling itself the "Imad Mughniyya Group."
However, Israeli authorities have dismissed statements from the group in the past, as it has claimed responsibility for other operations that may have been the work of others. It is believed to be linked to Fatah.
Hamas' armed wing the Al-Qassam Brigades reported the attack on its website, but while the group noted that resistance factions had the right to resist occupation under international law, it did not claim responsibility.
Early Saturday morning, a three-month old baby girl, two children aged three and 11, and their parents were stabbed to death in their home in Itamar settlement.
Interviewed on Israeli TV, military experts said Hamas was likely to be involved in the attack. The Islamist group regarded Nablus as one of its bases, and had active cells in the northern West Bank city, the analysts said.
Hebrew news sites said private Israeli security companies hired to protect the settlement had neglected their duties. According to reports, the alarm on the electric fence surrounding the settlement was activated several times. When the guards did not see any infiltrators in the area, they assumed there was a technical malfunction and turned off the alarm system, news reports said.
Meanwhile, an Israeli police correspondent told Israel's Channel 2 that police have raised the alert level in all Israeli cities fearing further attacks, particularly in Jerusalem. Concerns were heightened by the upcoming Jewish festival of Purim, due to begin Friday, as well as reports of Palestinian protests calling for national unity over the next week, the correspondent said.
He said Israeli police have deployed large forces on the streets of most Israeli cities.
Channel 2's military correspondent Ronny Daniel said the army continued to raid villages around Itamar settlement and that 20 Palestinians had been arrested.
The report showed images of drones hovering over the area.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would "act vigorously to defend the Israeli population and to punish the murderers,"
President Mahmoud Abbas telephoned Netanyahu to express his regret over the murders. The Israeli premier accused the Palestinian Authority of incitement against Israel, according to a statement from Netanyahu's office
"I expect you to stop the incitement in schools, textbooks and mosques and for you to educate your children for peace as we are doing. Murdering children in their sleep is murder for its own sake," he told Abbas.
Abbas denounced "all violence against civilians, whatever the motive" in a statement.
"I am against acts of vengeance. Violence begets violence," the president added.
Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said his government rejected violence without exception.
"An infant, two children and their parents were the victims, and as we have always rejected violence against our people, we reject it against others and we condemn it."
On Saturday evening, Netanyahu demanded a stronger condemnation of the attack from the PA.
"I am disappointed by the weak and mumbled statements. This is not how one condemns terrorism. This is not how one fights terrorism," he said.
He again accused the PA of "daily incitement" in schools, mosques and the media.
"The time has come to stop this double-talk in which the Palestinian Authority outwardly talks peace, and allows and sometimes leads incitement at home."
The only group to claim the attack has been an armed faction calling itself the "Imad Mughniyya Group."
However, Israeli authorities have dismissed statements from the group in the past, as it has claimed responsibility for other operations that may have been the work of others. It is believed to be linked to Fatah.
Hamas' armed wing the Al-Qassam Brigades reported the attack on its website, but while the group noted that resistance factions had the right to resist occupation under international law, it did not claim responsibility.
Villages across the West Bank have reported raids by settlers following the murder of five Israelis early Saturday morning in Itamar settlement.
A three-month old baby girl, two children aged three and 11, and their parents were all stabbed to death in a brutal attack which has been blamed on Palestinians.
As Israeli forces launched a manhunt across the northern West Bank, residents of several Palestinian villages said they were stormed by angry settlers.
In Burin, near Nablus, village council head Ali Eid said residents of the illegal Bracha settlement raided the village.
Settlers entered Maher Mahmoud Hassen's home and tried to take his children, who managed to escape, Eid said.
Settlers also entered the homes of Najeh and Hatem Tawfiq E'mran, he added.
Residents of nearby Huwwara also said they were harassed by settlers, who tried to enter Palestinian homes in the eastern side of the town.
Town officials called on residents to gather in the area to protect the homes in a call over the loudspeakers of the local mosque.
Residents responded to the call, and settlers left the area.
Meanwhile in Hebron, settlers threw rocks at a Palestinian Authority civil defense vehicle, smashing the wind screen and injuring the driver, police said.
Ibrahim Abu Sabha sustained head injuries from the shattered glass as he drove between Yatta and Al-Musafer villages in the southern West Bank district.
In the central West Bank village of Beitillu, residents said settlers handed out leaflets threatening residents that their lives were at risk.
Settlers distributed the statement signed by "the Jews from the land of Israel" at the village entrance, locals said.
Israeli forces have detained dozens of Palestinians since the attack in Itamar settlement. Several military checkpoints have been reinstalled and flying checkpoints set up across Nablus. Locals said the army has declared the district a closed military zone.
Israel's military had no immediate comment.
Tensions between Palestinians and settlers have escalated since the Israeli government removed structures at an illegal outpost west of Nablus on February 28.
Settlers responded to the demolition immediately, firebombing a home in Huwarra. Two children were taken to hospital suffering smoke inhalation.
Israeli soldiers fired live ammunition at Palestinians during clashes with settlers near Nablus on Monday, injuring 10 Palestinians, medics said. One settler was injured by a rock, a spokesman for settlers said.
Settlers also smashed shops and cars and cut down olive trees in Hebron.
On March 3, settlers organized a "day of rage" rallying in Israel and the West Bank and threatening further attacks against Palestinians.
Gaza govt: Settler attackers may not be Palestinian
A three-month old baby girl, two children aged three and 11, and their parents were all stabbed to death in a brutal attack which has been blamed on Palestinians.
As Israeli forces launched a manhunt across the northern West Bank, residents of several Palestinian villages said they were stormed by angry settlers.
In Burin, near Nablus, village council head Ali Eid said residents of the illegal Bracha settlement raided the village.
Settlers entered Maher Mahmoud Hassen's home and tried to take his children, who managed to escape, Eid said.
Settlers also entered the homes of Najeh and Hatem Tawfiq E'mran, he added.
Residents of nearby Huwwara also said they were harassed by settlers, who tried to enter Palestinian homes in the eastern side of the town.
Town officials called on residents to gather in the area to protect the homes in a call over the loudspeakers of the local mosque.
Residents responded to the call, and settlers left the area.
Meanwhile in Hebron, settlers threw rocks at a Palestinian Authority civil defense vehicle, smashing the wind screen and injuring the driver, police said.
Ibrahim Abu Sabha sustained head injuries from the shattered glass as he drove between Yatta and Al-Musafer villages in the southern West Bank district.
In the central West Bank village of Beitillu, residents said settlers handed out leaflets threatening residents that their lives were at risk.
Settlers distributed the statement signed by "the Jews from the land of Israel" at the village entrance, locals said.
Israeli forces have detained dozens of Palestinians since the attack in Itamar settlement. Several military checkpoints have been reinstalled and flying checkpoints set up across Nablus. Locals said the army has declared the district a closed military zone.
Israel's military had no immediate comment.
Tensions between Palestinians and settlers have escalated since the Israeli government removed structures at an illegal outpost west of Nablus on February 28.
Settlers responded to the demolition immediately, firebombing a home in Huwarra. Two children were taken to hospital suffering smoke inhalation.
Israeli soldiers fired live ammunition at Palestinians during clashes with settlers near Nablus on Monday, injuring 10 Palestinians, medics said. One settler was injured by a rock, a spokesman for settlers said.
Settlers also smashed shops and cars and cut down olive trees in Hebron.
On March 3, settlers organized a "day of rage" rallying in Israel and the West Bank and threatening further attacks against Palestinians.
Gaza govt: Settler attackers may not be Palestinian
Israeli soldiers block access to a house where five Israelis were murdered in the Jewish settlement of Itamar. Angry Israeli settlers entered a village near Nablus on Sunday after the grisly murder of a family of five, as police went on high alert to prevent revenge attacks
Palestinians may not be responsible for killing a family of five Israelis in Itamar settlement overnight Friday, the Gaza government said Sunday.
Israeli authorities immediately blamed Palestinians for the attack, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused the Palestinian Authority of "daily incitement" against Israel in his response to the killings.
However, Gaza government spokesman Taher An-Nunu said the Israeli government should not rule out the possibility that the attack was perpetrated by Israeli criminals.
Hamas has denied any involvement in the attack.
A shadowy faction calling itself the "Imad Mughniyya Group" claimed responsibility for the attack but Israeli authorities have dismissed the group's claims in the past. It has claimed responsibility for other operations in the past that may have been the work of others.
So far, no other faction has claimed involvement.
An-Nunu warned Israel against using the killings to justify an escalation in violence against the Gaza Strip.
He said that relocating Israel's domestic crises toward incitement against Palestinians was "unacceptable political blackmail."
Within 24 hours of the attack, Israeli ministers met and decided to approve a huge expansion in Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank.
Settlers have launched a series of attacks on Palestinians across the West Bank, storming villages, harassing residents in their homes, smashing shops and throwing rocks at Palestinian cars.
The international community recognizes that building Jewish-only housing on occupied Palestinian land is illegal according to international law and the Geneva Convention, and has repeatedly called on Israel to halt construction.
Israel's refusal led to the collapse of the last round of negotiations in September.
Palestinians may not be responsible for killing a family of five Israelis in Itamar settlement overnight Friday, the Gaza government said Sunday.
Israeli authorities immediately blamed Palestinians for the attack, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused the Palestinian Authority of "daily incitement" against Israel in his response to the killings.
However, Gaza government spokesman Taher An-Nunu said the Israeli government should not rule out the possibility that the attack was perpetrated by Israeli criminals.
Hamas has denied any involvement in the attack.
A shadowy faction calling itself the "Imad Mughniyya Group" claimed responsibility for the attack but Israeli authorities have dismissed the group's claims in the past. It has claimed responsibility for other operations in the past that may have been the work of others.
So far, no other faction has claimed involvement.
An-Nunu warned Israel against using the killings to justify an escalation in violence against the Gaza Strip.
He said that relocating Israel's domestic crises toward incitement against Palestinians was "unacceptable political blackmail."
Within 24 hours of the attack, Israeli ministers met and decided to approve a huge expansion in Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank.
Settlers have launched a series of attacks on Palestinians across the West Bank, storming villages, harassing residents in their homes, smashing shops and throwing rocks at Palestinian cars.
The international community recognizes that building Jewish-only housing on occupied Palestinian land is illegal according to international law and the Geneva Convention, and has repeatedly called on Israel to halt construction.
Israel's refusal led to the collapse of the last round of negotiations in September.
12 mar 2011
(updated below)
Late on Friday night, a Palestinian militant scaled the fence of the settlement of Itamar, south-east of Nablus. He made his way to one of the homes and climbed in through an open window. The first room he encountered was a nursery. He paced in and plunged a knife into a sleeping three-year-old toddler. Still unnoticed, he made his way to an adjacent bedroom, where he found and slayed an 11-year-old boy; then, finally arrived at the master bedroom, where he stabbed and killed the parents along with a four-month-old baby girl. The father’s body was found in bed, his arms still hugging his daughter; both of their throats have been slashed. The mother’s body was found on the floor, in a pool of blood; it would seem she was the only one who managed to resist the attacker, however briefly.
The murderer, who overlooked another bedroom where two more children slept, walked out of the house and left the settlement the way he came in.
About an hour later, the sixth and oldest sibling of the now nearly-extinct family arrived home from a late activity at her youth movement. The twelve-year-old girl did not manage to open the door and called a neighbor for help; their joint yells finally woke up her four-year-old brother – one the two the murderer didn’t notice in the dark – and he opened the door, revealing the full scale of the horror inside. When the medics and police arrived, the toddler was still breathing, slipping away from them just as they commenced resuscitation efforts. It took the three-year-old more than an hour to slowly bleed to death.
The sheer viciousness of this cold-blooded butchery should have provoked furious condemnation from those unequivocally opposed to the targeting of civilians – Israel’s civil society,the Left and the activist (“radical”) Left. However, at the time of writing, only two organizations spoke out: B’tselem, which has done the most extensive work of documenting the opposite sort of violence – by settlers against Palestinians – led the way late Saturday morning, announcing on Facebook and on its website that it is “appalled by the attack in Itamar and strongly condemns it. Intentional killing of civilians is a war crime and is unjustifiable. The Israeli and Palestinian authorities must work to locate and bring to justice those responsible for the attack.” About an hour later, Physicians for Human Rights joined in, announcing that the organization “strongly condemns the appalling attack in Itamar and calls the state of Israel and the Palestinian Authority to act in order to bring those responsible individuals to trial. Once again we learn that fences and security systems are not a guarantee for security. Only brave steps towards peace agreement and putting end to the conflict will bring end to these murderous acts.”
Apart from these two voices, and a quite a few individual activists expressing shock and dismay at the killings, much of Israel’s famously vibrant, undoubtedly committed activist Left remained silent. To my knowledge, no protest or vigil had been called for tonight by the radical Left, as it is almost always done when innocent Palestinian civilians are victims. Some individuals pointed out that the murders were horrible, but: The parents should have been more careful in where they chose to live / Israel and the Occupation is really to blame / what about Israel killing Palestinian children / the settlers are not really civilians, as they serve as instruments of land-grab and military control. At the worst end of the spectrum was one activist, who shared on Facebook the following gem, referring to radical settlers’ infamous practice of exacting a “price tag” from Palestinian civilians for any clash with Palestinian militants or Israeli law: “The occupation also has a price tag – the settlers got what they wanted.”
The activist Left’s confused and muted response reveals a shameful double standard – one that is not necessarily thought-out and intentioned, but one that needs to be urgently confronted and weeded out. It demonstrates that despite political awareness and commitment to human rights and international law, our community has yielded to one of the most common afflictions of a conflict area, and dehumanized an entire community, consciously or subconsciously rendering it second-class, semi-legitimate target for brutal violence. I remember the same pattern of thought going back throughout the past decade of the second Intifada, certainly through less graphic and intimate attacks on civilians – right up to the road shooting some six months ago, when four settlers driving on a deserted road late at night were sprayed with gunfire, and then dragged out of the car and calmly executed; two of them were spouses who left nine orphans behind, but the radical Left’s silence was even more deafening than today.
I want address this silence here and confront some of the arguments that were raised today in its defense on my Facebook feed and in conversations with fellow activists.
To those among us citing the illegality and illegitimacy of the settler enterprise: The community of Itamar is in and of itself a violation of international law. It was established to deepen Israeli hold on an the occupied territory; and over the years, the settlers of Itamar became almost equally well known for their violent attacks on Palestinian farmers as for the attacks that they themselves sustained – the community of 1,000 lost 15 of its members to attacks like last night’s over the past ten years. Needless to say, the occupation of the West Bank, the establishment of the settlement, and the individual settlers attack against their Palestinian neighbors are all illegal under international law; the latter are not only particularly brutish and wrong, but are also illegal under Israeli law.
But none of this justifies retaliatory violation of the very same laws, just like being robbed does not justify walking into the robber’s house and butchering him and his entire family. More generally, international law clearly allows armed resistance by occupied population to the armed forces of the occupier, but just as clearly bans targeting the occupier’s civilian population. The power of the law, certainly of international law, is in its totality and universality. We cannot call for selective application of the law against one party, and completely ignore the same law being broken by another; our legal argument loses any and all merit if we do that.
To those among us trying to blame the victim, claiming the murdered parents of the murdered children should have known better where to build their home: On the larger scale, the settlers are not only beneficiaries, but instruments and, crucially, human shields of a cynical state policy running through all the governments, left, right and “center.” Dumping the entire responsibility for the military, diplomatic and especially economic policy designed to drive as many Israelis as possible to the Occupied Territories on the shoulders of two young parents and their six children is absurd and, considering the horrific penance for this alleged responsibility, pretty much morally untenable.
Blaming the victims becomes even more untenable in this particular case. The parents did not take their children on a stroll through a minefield or a battle zone; They were sleeping at their home. We must also keep focus on the question of intent: If parents let their children play by the roadside and the children get run over, sure, they share some responsibility with the driver. But if they let their children play by the roadside and a driver deliberately swerves from the road, running over the children once or twice for good measure, and then speeding and running over the parents, there is just no reasonable way to keep the onus of the blame upon the parents. Simply none.
To those of us saying that no Israeli has the right to criticize any political violence by Palestinians, no matter how abhorrent: This is a subject for an entire separate post, but let me just say this – the inability to formulate your own opinion or criticize the party you generally support wins you no respect on either side of the conflict; the manifest double-standard used to apply supposedly universal principals completely undermines your argument; you afford Palestinian resistance fighters no dignity when you paint them as imbeciles completely deprived and excused of the human duty of distinguishing good and evil; and finally, you do your Palestinian comrades no service when you imply by your silence that the brutal murder of a family of five is just as legitimate as engaging in combat with occupation troops or holding mass protests of civil disobedience in Bilin, Nialin and Nebi Salach.
To those among us saying settlers serve an aggressive policy and that such violence, while regrettable, is aimed at the legitimate goal of driving “invaders” out (yes, I heard today the term “invaders” used to describe the murdered children): Watch your step. You’re wading deep into legitimizing one of the acts of war most despised and hated by all decent human beings, especially by progressives. It’s one thing if you support partitioning Israel-Palestine once again, and believe that populations should be moved to make this partition possible and to redress the illegal acts of occupation and land grab incremental to the establishment of the settlement enterprise in the first place. But killing innocent members of a civilian community in order to get the rest of the community to leave has one name and one name only – ethnic cleansing. In fact, this is exactly the method used, to everlasting shame, by Israel to ethnically cleanse many of the Palestinian communities in the Nakba of 1948. You don’t’ want to be justifying the Nakba, or the crime of ethnic cleansing, do you?
Finally, a word about the perpetrator. It’s tempting and comforting to denounce him as lunatic, or to say, as I was told this morning, that the insult to the Palestinian cause is not the act itself but our association between the two. But while it seems plausible to believe that a person or persons involved in such an act would need to be at least a little unhinged, this isn’t the point. It’s safe to assume that neither this person, nor dozens of others who committed unjustifiable atrocities in the name of Palestinian freedom, nor many dozens of others who committed unjustifiable atrocities for what they believed was Israel’s defense, would have considered bathing their hands elbow-deep in innocent blood if it wasn’t for the situation of conflict.
The murderer of the settlers in Itamar is part of a bigger picture of violent strife, in which people do appallingly brutish things to each other; and he also bears personal responsibility for the act he had chosen to commit. If there is ever a peace agreement, in whatever format, between Israelis and Palestinians, the rehabilitation of perpetrators on all sides can and must be a part of it, and difficult though it may be to accept, the person who carried out last night’s atrocity should be included, along with military and paramilitary perpetrators on all sides. But he must not be exempt from paying some sort of price for his individual responsibility – whether through looking into the eyes of the families of his victims at a truth and reconciliation committee years from now, or by serving a lengthy prison term, or both.
Until then, we on the Left – especially the activist Left – must find a way of loudly and unreservedly condemning atrocities committed in the names of causes we believe in. We owe it to ourselves, to our struggle and to our comrades – as progressives and as human beings.
————————————————————————————————————————————————-
Update: I’m pleased to report that two more left-wing organizations have condemned the killings: Solidarity Sheikh Jarrah, one of the most important activist Left movement operating today; and New Family, Israel’s pre-eminent organization for equality in marriage and family rights. The full quote from Solidarity Sheikh Jarrah:
The Solidarity Sheikh Jarrah Movement condemns with utter disgust the murder of the five family members in Itamar. Such acts contradict the ideology that guides us and undermine the chances of a shared and better future.
Well done.
Update II Another key organisation of the struggle against the occupation has condemned the killings: The Bilin Popular Committee Against the Wall, the flagship group of the non-violent struggle against the separation barrier cutting Palestinians away from their land and livelihood. Here is the response in full:
Palestinian Popular Committees Against the Wall and Israeli Settlements express their deep sadness and sorrow concerning the killing incident in the Itamar colonial settlement. The Popular Committees view the killing incidence as a part of the escalation generated and mobilized by the policies and actions of the Israeli occupation. These policies created the circumstances for committing these heinous actions. Therefore, we believe that the Israeli government bears full responsibility for the occupation and its consequences. The Popular Committees are committed to nonviolence and civil disobedience in our struggle to end the Israeli occupation. Though the crime was committed on colonized land, we see the killing of children as a despicable crime regardless of their nationality, gender, color, race or religion.
Yet more proof that you can condemn an atrocity designed to hijack your cause without compromising the cause itself one inch.
Condemnations also came in from Zionist Left organisations, like J-Street and Peace Now; Human Rights Watch released a particularly refined and nuanced statement. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Netanyahu reacted to the murder in the most cynical way imaginable – by blaming the Palestinian Authority as a whole, and by authorising hundreds of more housing units to be built in the occupied West Bank. The settlement movements more radical elements have launched a series of revenge attack, targeting the nearest available Palestinian civil population.
Obviously, both responses are morally and politically beneath contempt, and should be condemned unreservedly. Moreover, they play into the same dynamic the attackers wanted to create. The purpose of such actions, whether in Israel-Palestine, in Northern Ireland or in Algiers, is to get the state or stronger party to violently crack down on dissent, thereby radicalising the attackers’ home constituency; this radicalisation is then used to recruit activists for further attacks, which will draw more retaliation, more radicalisation and more recruits; and so on, until the pendulum of violent conflict is swinging again with ever-escalating force.
I’d also like to use this update to address two criticisms of the article I’ve heard from a number of valued fellow activists: That I’m being too apologetic and that I haven’t offered a constructive solution to the issue I’ve raised.
Regarding the first: I am absolutely not apologising for anything or for anyone. I do not feel the tiniest shred of personal guilt or responsibility for the murders, and I don’t think either the Israeli or activist left Palestinian activists should feel anything like that either. I’m also not doing that to have a stronger moral basis in arguments with political opponents. Atrocities can and should be condemned for their own sake, even as we acknowledge and highlight their context. My article merely attempts to highlight a flaw in how we on the activist left have been addressing a certain atrocity recurring in this conflict, and to suggest how we might fine-tune our moral and political consistency to address it.
As for practical suggestions: A few fellow activists and I propose holding a vigil in Tel Aviv next week, condemning both the Occupation and the murder of civilians, especially children, in the name of the struggle against the Occupation. Details will be published on Facebook and on this page later tonight.
Update III: Rabbis for Human Rights, whose activists are routinely attacked by violent settler thugs in the West Bank, also have no qualms in condemning the murder in Itamar:
Rabbis For Human Rights strongly condemns the terrible murders in Itamar. They were of course a violation of the most basic human right, the right to life. We send our condolences to the family.
I’m hopeful that by tonight, the gist of my post in relation to this particular case will have become irrelevant.
Late on Friday night, a Palestinian militant scaled the fence of the settlement of Itamar, south-east of Nablus. He made his way to one of the homes and climbed in through an open window. The first room he encountered was a nursery. He paced in and plunged a knife into a sleeping three-year-old toddler. Still unnoticed, he made his way to an adjacent bedroom, where he found and slayed an 11-year-old boy; then, finally arrived at the master bedroom, where he stabbed and killed the parents along with a four-month-old baby girl. The father’s body was found in bed, his arms still hugging his daughter; both of their throats have been slashed. The mother’s body was found on the floor, in a pool of blood; it would seem she was the only one who managed to resist the attacker, however briefly.
The murderer, who overlooked another bedroom where two more children slept, walked out of the house and left the settlement the way he came in.
About an hour later, the sixth and oldest sibling of the now nearly-extinct family arrived home from a late activity at her youth movement. The twelve-year-old girl did not manage to open the door and called a neighbor for help; their joint yells finally woke up her four-year-old brother – one the two the murderer didn’t notice in the dark – and he opened the door, revealing the full scale of the horror inside. When the medics and police arrived, the toddler was still breathing, slipping away from them just as they commenced resuscitation efforts. It took the three-year-old more than an hour to slowly bleed to death.
The sheer viciousness of this cold-blooded butchery should have provoked furious condemnation from those unequivocally opposed to the targeting of civilians – Israel’s civil society,the Left and the activist (“radical”) Left. However, at the time of writing, only two organizations spoke out: B’tselem, which has done the most extensive work of documenting the opposite sort of violence – by settlers against Palestinians – led the way late Saturday morning, announcing on Facebook and on its website that it is “appalled by the attack in Itamar and strongly condemns it. Intentional killing of civilians is a war crime and is unjustifiable. The Israeli and Palestinian authorities must work to locate and bring to justice those responsible for the attack.” About an hour later, Physicians for Human Rights joined in, announcing that the organization “strongly condemns the appalling attack in Itamar and calls the state of Israel and the Palestinian Authority to act in order to bring those responsible individuals to trial. Once again we learn that fences and security systems are not a guarantee for security. Only brave steps towards peace agreement and putting end to the conflict will bring end to these murderous acts.”
Apart from these two voices, and a quite a few individual activists expressing shock and dismay at the killings, much of Israel’s famously vibrant, undoubtedly committed activist Left remained silent. To my knowledge, no protest or vigil had been called for tonight by the radical Left, as it is almost always done when innocent Palestinian civilians are victims. Some individuals pointed out that the murders were horrible, but: The parents should have been more careful in where they chose to live / Israel and the Occupation is really to blame / what about Israel killing Palestinian children / the settlers are not really civilians, as they serve as instruments of land-grab and military control. At the worst end of the spectrum was one activist, who shared on Facebook the following gem, referring to radical settlers’ infamous practice of exacting a “price tag” from Palestinian civilians for any clash with Palestinian militants or Israeli law: “The occupation also has a price tag – the settlers got what they wanted.”
The activist Left’s confused and muted response reveals a shameful double standard – one that is not necessarily thought-out and intentioned, but one that needs to be urgently confronted and weeded out. It demonstrates that despite political awareness and commitment to human rights and international law, our community has yielded to one of the most common afflictions of a conflict area, and dehumanized an entire community, consciously or subconsciously rendering it second-class, semi-legitimate target for brutal violence. I remember the same pattern of thought going back throughout the past decade of the second Intifada, certainly through less graphic and intimate attacks on civilians – right up to the road shooting some six months ago, when four settlers driving on a deserted road late at night were sprayed with gunfire, and then dragged out of the car and calmly executed; two of them were spouses who left nine orphans behind, but the radical Left’s silence was even more deafening than today.
I want address this silence here and confront some of the arguments that were raised today in its defense on my Facebook feed and in conversations with fellow activists.
To those among us citing the illegality and illegitimacy of the settler enterprise: The community of Itamar is in and of itself a violation of international law. It was established to deepen Israeli hold on an the occupied territory; and over the years, the settlers of Itamar became almost equally well known for their violent attacks on Palestinian farmers as for the attacks that they themselves sustained – the community of 1,000 lost 15 of its members to attacks like last night’s over the past ten years. Needless to say, the occupation of the West Bank, the establishment of the settlement, and the individual settlers attack against their Palestinian neighbors are all illegal under international law; the latter are not only particularly brutish and wrong, but are also illegal under Israeli law.
But none of this justifies retaliatory violation of the very same laws, just like being robbed does not justify walking into the robber’s house and butchering him and his entire family. More generally, international law clearly allows armed resistance by occupied population to the armed forces of the occupier, but just as clearly bans targeting the occupier’s civilian population. The power of the law, certainly of international law, is in its totality and universality. We cannot call for selective application of the law against one party, and completely ignore the same law being broken by another; our legal argument loses any and all merit if we do that.
To those among us trying to blame the victim, claiming the murdered parents of the murdered children should have known better where to build their home: On the larger scale, the settlers are not only beneficiaries, but instruments and, crucially, human shields of a cynical state policy running through all the governments, left, right and “center.” Dumping the entire responsibility for the military, diplomatic and especially economic policy designed to drive as many Israelis as possible to the Occupied Territories on the shoulders of two young parents and their six children is absurd and, considering the horrific penance for this alleged responsibility, pretty much morally untenable.
Blaming the victims becomes even more untenable in this particular case. The parents did not take their children on a stroll through a minefield or a battle zone; They were sleeping at their home. We must also keep focus on the question of intent: If parents let their children play by the roadside and the children get run over, sure, they share some responsibility with the driver. But if they let their children play by the roadside and a driver deliberately swerves from the road, running over the children once or twice for good measure, and then speeding and running over the parents, there is just no reasonable way to keep the onus of the blame upon the parents. Simply none.
To those of us saying that no Israeli has the right to criticize any political violence by Palestinians, no matter how abhorrent: This is a subject for an entire separate post, but let me just say this – the inability to formulate your own opinion or criticize the party you generally support wins you no respect on either side of the conflict; the manifest double-standard used to apply supposedly universal principals completely undermines your argument; you afford Palestinian resistance fighters no dignity when you paint them as imbeciles completely deprived and excused of the human duty of distinguishing good and evil; and finally, you do your Palestinian comrades no service when you imply by your silence that the brutal murder of a family of five is just as legitimate as engaging in combat with occupation troops or holding mass protests of civil disobedience in Bilin, Nialin and Nebi Salach.
To those among us saying settlers serve an aggressive policy and that such violence, while regrettable, is aimed at the legitimate goal of driving “invaders” out (yes, I heard today the term “invaders” used to describe the murdered children): Watch your step. You’re wading deep into legitimizing one of the acts of war most despised and hated by all decent human beings, especially by progressives. It’s one thing if you support partitioning Israel-Palestine once again, and believe that populations should be moved to make this partition possible and to redress the illegal acts of occupation and land grab incremental to the establishment of the settlement enterprise in the first place. But killing innocent members of a civilian community in order to get the rest of the community to leave has one name and one name only – ethnic cleansing. In fact, this is exactly the method used, to everlasting shame, by Israel to ethnically cleanse many of the Palestinian communities in the Nakba of 1948. You don’t’ want to be justifying the Nakba, or the crime of ethnic cleansing, do you?
Finally, a word about the perpetrator. It’s tempting and comforting to denounce him as lunatic, or to say, as I was told this morning, that the insult to the Palestinian cause is not the act itself but our association between the two. But while it seems plausible to believe that a person or persons involved in such an act would need to be at least a little unhinged, this isn’t the point. It’s safe to assume that neither this person, nor dozens of others who committed unjustifiable atrocities in the name of Palestinian freedom, nor many dozens of others who committed unjustifiable atrocities for what they believed was Israel’s defense, would have considered bathing their hands elbow-deep in innocent blood if it wasn’t for the situation of conflict.
The murderer of the settlers in Itamar is part of a bigger picture of violent strife, in which people do appallingly brutish things to each other; and he also bears personal responsibility for the act he had chosen to commit. If there is ever a peace agreement, in whatever format, between Israelis and Palestinians, the rehabilitation of perpetrators on all sides can and must be a part of it, and difficult though it may be to accept, the person who carried out last night’s atrocity should be included, along with military and paramilitary perpetrators on all sides. But he must not be exempt from paying some sort of price for his individual responsibility – whether through looking into the eyes of the families of his victims at a truth and reconciliation committee years from now, or by serving a lengthy prison term, or both.
Until then, we on the Left – especially the activist Left – must find a way of loudly and unreservedly condemning atrocities committed in the names of causes we believe in. We owe it to ourselves, to our struggle and to our comrades – as progressives and as human beings.
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Update: I’m pleased to report that two more left-wing organizations have condemned the killings: Solidarity Sheikh Jarrah, one of the most important activist Left movement operating today; and New Family, Israel’s pre-eminent organization for equality in marriage and family rights. The full quote from Solidarity Sheikh Jarrah:
The Solidarity Sheikh Jarrah Movement condemns with utter disgust the murder of the five family members in Itamar. Such acts contradict the ideology that guides us and undermine the chances of a shared and better future.
Well done.
Update II Another key organisation of the struggle against the occupation has condemned the killings: The Bilin Popular Committee Against the Wall, the flagship group of the non-violent struggle against the separation barrier cutting Palestinians away from their land and livelihood. Here is the response in full:
Palestinian Popular Committees Against the Wall and Israeli Settlements express their deep sadness and sorrow concerning the killing incident in the Itamar colonial settlement. The Popular Committees view the killing incidence as a part of the escalation generated and mobilized by the policies and actions of the Israeli occupation. These policies created the circumstances for committing these heinous actions. Therefore, we believe that the Israeli government bears full responsibility for the occupation and its consequences. The Popular Committees are committed to nonviolence and civil disobedience in our struggle to end the Israeli occupation. Though the crime was committed on colonized land, we see the killing of children as a despicable crime regardless of their nationality, gender, color, race or religion.
Yet more proof that you can condemn an atrocity designed to hijack your cause without compromising the cause itself one inch.
Condemnations also came in from Zionist Left organisations, like J-Street and Peace Now; Human Rights Watch released a particularly refined and nuanced statement. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Netanyahu reacted to the murder in the most cynical way imaginable – by blaming the Palestinian Authority as a whole, and by authorising hundreds of more housing units to be built in the occupied West Bank. The settlement movements more radical elements have launched a series of revenge attack, targeting the nearest available Palestinian civil population.
Obviously, both responses are morally and politically beneath contempt, and should be condemned unreservedly. Moreover, they play into the same dynamic the attackers wanted to create. The purpose of such actions, whether in Israel-Palestine, in Northern Ireland or in Algiers, is to get the state or stronger party to violently crack down on dissent, thereby radicalising the attackers’ home constituency; this radicalisation is then used to recruit activists for further attacks, which will draw more retaliation, more radicalisation and more recruits; and so on, until the pendulum of violent conflict is swinging again with ever-escalating force.
I’d also like to use this update to address two criticisms of the article I’ve heard from a number of valued fellow activists: That I’m being too apologetic and that I haven’t offered a constructive solution to the issue I’ve raised.
Regarding the first: I am absolutely not apologising for anything or for anyone. I do not feel the tiniest shred of personal guilt or responsibility for the murders, and I don’t think either the Israeli or activist left Palestinian activists should feel anything like that either. I’m also not doing that to have a stronger moral basis in arguments with political opponents. Atrocities can and should be condemned for their own sake, even as we acknowledge and highlight their context. My article merely attempts to highlight a flaw in how we on the activist left have been addressing a certain atrocity recurring in this conflict, and to suggest how we might fine-tune our moral and political consistency to address it.
As for practical suggestions: A few fellow activists and I propose holding a vigil in Tel Aviv next week, condemning both the Occupation and the murder of civilians, especially children, in the name of the struggle against the Occupation. Details will be published on Facebook and on this page later tonight.
Update III: Rabbis for Human Rights, whose activists are routinely attacked by violent settler thugs in the West Bank, also have no qualms in condemning the murder in Itamar:
Rabbis For Human Rights strongly condemns the terrible murders in Itamar. They were of course a violation of the most basic human right, the right to life. We send our condolences to the family.
I’m hopeful that by tonight, the gist of my post in relation to this particular case will have become irrelevant.
The Fogel family murdered by terrorists in Itamar
Today, the specter of death stalks the settlement of Itamar. A Palestinian militant penetrated the security barriers intended to protect the residents and broke into a home of the sleeping Fogel family and stabbed to death the parents and three of their children, leaving behind three young orphans. It is a heinous, savage crime. The crime of a Palestinian terrorist bent on avenging blood. The kind of crime for which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has become known, notoriously so.
This is a crime that takes us back to the bloody civil wars and genocidal tribal conflict of the Bible. It is a crime perpetrated by someone who doesn’t believe a grievance can be expressed any other way, doesn’t believe there is any hope of resolving the conflict. The killer not only hates all settlers, he probably hates his own leadership and blames them as much for being unable to deliver a victory for the Palestinian people.
This is a crime that reinforces the worst hatreds on both sides. Some Palestinians, hopefully only a few, will feel pride that a blow has been struck to avenge the innocent Palestinian blood spilt by Israel’s armed forces, and even settlers like those of Itamar and the more radical extremist settlements like Tapuach and Yitzhar. Some Israelis and Diaspora Jews will, in their pain bray for the blood of the killers: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. No one in such circumstances will have the presence of mind to remember Martin Luther King’s warning that such cycles of violence leave us all toothless and blind.
A perfect example is Rabbi Yishaya Rotter, owner of Rotter, Israel’s most popular internet gossip forum (a combination of Gawker, TMZ and Drudge Report), who calls implicitly in a forum editorial for mass pogroms against West Bank Palestinians, calling them “children of death, every one of whom wishes to kill us.” He excuses himself from legal culpability by saying he’s not taking action himself, only expressing an opinion. Which of course will constitute “wild incitement” for his settler followers to extract many pounds of flesh and pints of blood from their Palestinian enemy. Rotter further spouts such inflammatory nonsense as the claim that settlers must take matters into their own hands because the current Israeli government (that is, the one run by Bibi Netanyahu and the far-right Likud) is “under the thumb of the far-left” and their media hacks who “justify such murders;” along with “obtuse courts of justice who mistakenly believe this country is Holland or Belgium.” What is truly needed, Rotter claims, is “all out war.”
Terror attacks like this allow the worst of each side to sit back smugly and say: I told you so. Another example: Bibi Netanyahu’s ignorant, hateful laying of blame on the Palestinian Authority for the crime instead of on his own security forces (who control and patrol the territory surrounding the settlement):
Benjamin Netanyahu, pointed a finger at the Palestinian Authority, blaming it for what he described as incitement in the mosques and by the Palestinian Authority-controlled news media. According to a statement by his office, Mr. Netanyahu said, “A society that permits such wild incitement is one that eventually brings about the murder of children.”
The PA does not have any responsibility for this area as it is outside Area C, the only territory the PA does control and patrol. In fact, Haaretz today makes clear that a major ISRAELI security breach and communications snafu allowed this grisly series of murders.
This killer did not kill because anyone on his side told him to. He didn’t kill because of wild incitement, unless you count the tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians killed by the IDF as “wild incitement.” He killed because he has seen his own people slaughtered over the course of decades of Occupation; because he felt himself and his people powerless to do anything about it.
Make no mistake, I do not justify cold-blooded murder as happened in Itamar. But I don’t justify it either in Gaza or Lebanon or on the Mavi Marmara or in Bilin. And I tell you that there will be such cold-blooded murder on both sides until Israel decides it must compromise in order to settle the conflict. So Israel, if you want to elect leaders like Bibi Netanyahu or Ehud Barak or Avigdor Lieberman to lead you–they will lead you through the wasteland of Azazel. You will never get out of it alive. And there will be scores more Itamars along with scores more Cast Leads.
Not to mention scores more settler “payback” attacks on neighboring Palestinian population centers like Nablus. No doubt Palestinians (aside from the actual killers and those who assisted them who will be hunted like dogs and killed without mercy) will die in the coming days. For the settlers like the Palestinian terrorists believe the only answer to such murder is counter-murder. Get ready for the death cycle, the tit for tat of blood for blood.
And lest the Israeli right think that tragedies like these will increase support for their nationalist cause, they are wrong. Yes, there will be momentary upswell of sympathy and anger on behalf of the settlers and the victims. But this will be followed by general revulsion by many moderate individuals including young Jews who will say: I’ve had enough of this. Too much blood. Too much hatred. Let them fight to the death if they want. But I refuse to allow it to have anything to do with me. This is the type of deliberate turning away from Israel that will be the death knell of classical Zionist solidarity.
Today, the specter of death stalks the settlement of Itamar. A Palestinian militant penetrated the security barriers intended to protect the residents and broke into a home of the sleeping Fogel family and stabbed to death the parents and three of their children, leaving behind three young orphans. It is a heinous, savage crime. The crime of a Palestinian terrorist bent on avenging blood. The kind of crime for which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has become known, notoriously so.
This is a crime that takes us back to the bloody civil wars and genocidal tribal conflict of the Bible. It is a crime perpetrated by someone who doesn’t believe a grievance can be expressed any other way, doesn’t believe there is any hope of resolving the conflict. The killer not only hates all settlers, he probably hates his own leadership and blames them as much for being unable to deliver a victory for the Palestinian people.
This is a crime that reinforces the worst hatreds on both sides. Some Palestinians, hopefully only a few, will feel pride that a blow has been struck to avenge the innocent Palestinian blood spilt by Israel’s armed forces, and even settlers like those of Itamar and the more radical extremist settlements like Tapuach and Yitzhar. Some Israelis and Diaspora Jews will, in their pain bray for the blood of the killers: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. No one in such circumstances will have the presence of mind to remember Martin Luther King’s warning that such cycles of violence leave us all toothless and blind.
A perfect example is Rabbi Yishaya Rotter, owner of Rotter, Israel’s most popular internet gossip forum (a combination of Gawker, TMZ and Drudge Report), who calls implicitly in a forum editorial for mass pogroms against West Bank Palestinians, calling them “children of death, every one of whom wishes to kill us.” He excuses himself from legal culpability by saying he’s not taking action himself, only expressing an opinion. Which of course will constitute “wild incitement” for his settler followers to extract many pounds of flesh and pints of blood from their Palestinian enemy. Rotter further spouts such inflammatory nonsense as the claim that settlers must take matters into their own hands because the current Israeli government (that is, the one run by Bibi Netanyahu and the far-right Likud) is “under the thumb of the far-left” and their media hacks who “justify such murders;” along with “obtuse courts of justice who mistakenly believe this country is Holland or Belgium.” What is truly needed, Rotter claims, is “all out war.”
Terror attacks like this allow the worst of each side to sit back smugly and say: I told you so. Another example: Bibi Netanyahu’s ignorant, hateful laying of blame on the Palestinian Authority for the crime instead of on his own security forces (who control and patrol the territory surrounding the settlement):
Benjamin Netanyahu, pointed a finger at the Palestinian Authority, blaming it for what he described as incitement in the mosques and by the Palestinian Authority-controlled news media. According to a statement by his office, Mr. Netanyahu said, “A society that permits such wild incitement is one that eventually brings about the murder of children.”
The PA does not have any responsibility for this area as it is outside Area C, the only territory the PA does control and patrol. In fact, Haaretz today makes clear that a major ISRAELI security breach and communications snafu allowed this grisly series of murders.
This killer did not kill because anyone on his side told him to. He didn’t kill because of wild incitement, unless you count the tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians killed by the IDF as “wild incitement.” He killed because he has seen his own people slaughtered over the course of decades of Occupation; because he felt himself and his people powerless to do anything about it.
Make no mistake, I do not justify cold-blooded murder as happened in Itamar. But I don’t justify it either in Gaza or Lebanon or on the Mavi Marmara or in Bilin. And I tell you that there will be such cold-blooded murder on both sides until Israel decides it must compromise in order to settle the conflict. So Israel, if you want to elect leaders like Bibi Netanyahu or Ehud Barak or Avigdor Lieberman to lead you–they will lead you through the wasteland of Azazel. You will never get out of it alive. And there will be scores more Itamars along with scores more Cast Leads.
Not to mention scores more settler “payback” attacks on neighboring Palestinian population centers like Nablus. No doubt Palestinians (aside from the actual killers and those who assisted them who will be hunted like dogs and killed without mercy) will die in the coming days. For the settlers like the Palestinian terrorists believe the only answer to such murder is counter-murder. Get ready for the death cycle, the tit for tat of blood for blood.
And lest the Israeli right think that tragedies like these will increase support for their nationalist cause, they are wrong. Yes, there will be momentary upswell of sympathy and anger on behalf of the settlers and the victims. But this will be followed by general revulsion by many moderate individuals including young Jews who will say: I’ve had enough of this. Too much blood. Too much hatred. Let them fight to the death if they want. But I refuse to allow it to have anything to do with me. This is the type of deliberate turning away from Israel that will be the death knell of classical Zionist solidarity.
Israeli occupation forces (IOF) stormed the village of Orta east of Nablus and rounded up 17 Palestinian youths mostly brothers on Saturday.
Local sources said that the campaign started shortly after the attack on nearby Itamar settlement in which five settlers were killed.
They noted that the soldiers encircled the Orta cemetery and thoroughly searched it.
The IOF troops are still imposing curfews on Orta and nearby villages in addition to blocking entrances to them.
In Burin village to the southeast of Nablus, tens of Jewish armed settlers attacked the village and wreaked havoc in it, eyewitnesses told the PIC.
They said that the settlers vowed to avenge the killing of the five settlers by attacking all villages in eastern Nablus.
Netanyahu: Incitement led to murder of children
Local sources said that the campaign started shortly after the attack on nearby Itamar settlement in which five settlers were killed.
They noted that the soldiers encircled the Orta cemetery and thoroughly searched it.
The IOF troops are still imposing curfews on Orta and nearby villages in addition to blocking entrances to them.
In Burin village to the southeast of Nablus, tens of Jewish armed settlers attacked the village and wreaked havoc in it, eyewitnesses told the PIC.
They said that the settlers vowed to avenge the killing of the five settlers by attacking all villages in eastern Nablus.
Netanyahu: Incitement led to murder of children
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PM slams Palestinians in wake of West Bank massacre of five family members; 'society that permits such wild incitement ends up prompting the murder of children,' he says. PA minister: Israel rushing to accuse us of murder.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is accusing the Palestinians of creating an atmosphere of incitement that led to the brutal killing of five family members in a West Bank community Saturday. At least one terrorist infiltrated the settlement of Itamar early Saturday and proceeded to murder two parents and three of their children, aged 11, 3 and two months, in their sleep. "A society that permits such wild incitement ends up prompting the murder of children," the PM said Saturday following the horrific attack. A statement issued by the Prime Minister's Office said Netanyahu condemns the murder of the innocent Itamar family and demands that the Palestinian Authority put an end to incitement at mosques and in the media. "Netanyahu is encouraging the settlers at this difficult time everyone knows - and those who came to hurt us will also know that the future of the settlement enterprise will not be decided by terror," the statement said. PA questions Israel's assertions The prime minister held consultations Saturday with the defense minister, IDF chief of staff and Shin Bet director and instructed them to capture the killers. Netanyahu also spoke with Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and the two agreed that the Foreign Ministry will aim to elicit global condemnations against the PA. Earlier, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki condemned the attack, but questioned Israel's assertion that the Palestinians were being the murder. "No Palestinian in the past killed an infant and butchered people in such way based on a nationalistic or vengeful motive," he said. "This raises doubt as to Israel's rush to accuse the Palestinians of committing this act." Meanwhile, the United States condemned the attack and urged the PA to unequivocally do the same. "There is no possible justification for the killing of parents and children in their home. We call on the Palestinian Authority to unequivocally condemn this terrorist attack," the White House said in a statement.
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'Settlers attacked Palestinian houses'
First violent response- Palestinian sources reported on Saturday that settlers attacked houses in the West Bank villages of Burin and Hawara, near Nablus and the settlement of Itamar, where five family members were stabbed to death in their sleep Friday night by terrorists who infiltrated the settlement.
"Price tag" operations perpetrated by right-wing activists and settlers have been reported frequently in the past few weeks, the latest following the evacuation of structures in the West Bank outpost of Havat Gilad.
The violent acts have included torching of Palestinian vehicles, spraying slurs and blocking various roads throughout the country.
Ariel Mayor Ron Nachman commented on the "price tag" operations shortly before the incidents in Burin and Hawara were reported, saying "I am not responsible for violent acts perpetrated from either side."
Nachman arrived in Itamar Saturday afternoon and expressed anger over the fact Defense Minister Ehud Barak has yet to visit the settlement.
"I want him to look me in the eye. Where are all the inciting elements from within? Where are the human rights defenders? I demand to investigate the correlation between their statements and this heinous murder," he said angrily.
Nachman called on the government to "probe all the bleeding hearts that de-legitimize the residents living here."
He also slammed the law enforcement apparatus and the Supreme Court for failing to stop the incitement.
"There is a direct link between domestic incitement and the murder. We need to find those responsible for the attack and give them the death penalty. I can't recall such a horrific terror attack," he said.
Palestinian sources claim settlers attacked homes in West Bank villages of Hawara, Burin, as part of 'price tag' policy following murder of five family members in settlement of Itamar
First violent response- Palestinian sources reported on Saturday that settlers attacked houses in the West Bank villages of Burin and Hawara, near Nablus and the settlement of Itamar, where five family members were stabbed to death in their sleep Friday night by terrorists who infiltrated the settlement.
"Price tag" operations perpetrated by right-wing activists and settlers have been reported frequently in the past few weeks, the latest following the evacuation of structures in the West Bank outpost of Havat Gilad.
The violent acts have included torching of Palestinian vehicles, spraying slurs and blocking various roads throughout the country.
Ariel Mayor Ron Nachman commented on the "price tag" operations shortly before the incidents in Burin and Hawara were reported, saying "I am not responsible for violent acts perpetrated from either side."
Nachman arrived in Itamar Saturday afternoon and expressed anger over the fact Defense Minister Ehud Barak has yet to visit the settlement.
"I want him to look me in the eye. Where are all the inciting elements from within? Where are the human rights defenders? I demand to investigate the correlation between their statements and this heinous murder," he said angrily.
Nachman called on the government to "probe all the bleeding hearts that de-legitimize the residents living here."
He also slammed the law enforcement apparatus and the Supreme Court for failing to stop the incitement.
"There is a direct link between domestic incitement and the murder. We need to find those responsible for the attack and give them the death penalty. I can't recall such a horrific terror attack," he said.
Palestinian sources claim settlers attacked homes in West Bank villages of Hawara, Burin, as part of 'price tag' policy following murder of five family members in settlement of Itamar
Illegitimate PA premier in Ramallah Salam Fayyad has denounced the killing of five Israelis from the Itamar settlement near Nablus in the northern West Bank.
But Fayyad meanwhile failed to denounce the daily attacks and riots targeting Palestinians by armed Jewish settlers backed by Israeli armed forces as well as the Israeli authorities' onslaught of arrests and home demolitions.
There should be no doubt about our position relating to violence. We categorically reject it, Fayyad said during a ceremony on Saturday to place the foundation block of the Beit Jala municipal building.
We have repeatedly said that we reject and condemn the violence against our people, he said. Violence does not justify violence.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier vowed to punish the perpetrators and called on de facto Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas to give the Israeli forces full aid in the matter.
But Fayyad meanwhile failed to denounce the daily attacks and riots targeting Palestinians by armed Jewish settlers backed by Israeli armed forces as well as the Israeli authorities' onslaught of arrests and home demolitions.
There should be no doubt about our position relating to violence. We categorically reject it, Fayyad said during a ceremony on Saturday to place the foundation block of the Beit Jala municipal building.
We have repeatedly said that we reject and condemn the violence against our people, he said. Violence does not justify violence.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier vowed to punish the perpetrators and called on de facto Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas to give the Israeli forces full aid in the matter.
10 mar 2011
Terrorist stabs five family members to death in settlement of Itamar early Saturday; three children, including baby girl, among victims. Paramedic describes horrific sight, toys next to pools of blood.
Horror in Samaria: A terrorist infiltrated the West Bank settlement of Itamar, southeast of Nablus, early Saturday and stabbed five family members to death.
The shocking attack occurred around 1 am as the terrorist entered the family home and murdered three children aged 11, 3, and a baby girl along with their parents. The victims were apparently sleeping as the killer came in.
Itamar residents reported that shots were heard in the area; the terrorist managed to flee the scene.
Three other children at the home, a 12-year-old girl and her two brothers, aged 6 and 2, were able to escape to a nearby house and inform their neighbors of the attack.
The terrorist who carried out the massacre cut the fence surrounding Itamar and entered the home of the victims through the window, an initial probe of the murder showed. Authorities could not immediately discount the possibility that more than one attacker was involved in the murder.
'Toys next to pools of blood'
Following an initial report of the incident, large IDF and police forces rushed to the site. The Air Force also joined the effort to track down the terrorist, deploying numerous aircraft in the area. The nights sky was lit up with flares, as special IDF and police forces were called in to assist in the manhunt.
The IDF Spokesmans Office said troops are scouring the area in search of the suspect. The IDF is performing inspections at all crossing points set up in the region.
Magen David Adom ambulance service teams pronounced the victims dead at the scene. MDA spokesman Zaki Heller said the ambulance service got a call around 1 am and dispatched large teams of paramedics to the area.
When rescue forces entered the house they encountered a very difficult sight...There were five people there who were hurt. We could do nothing but pronounce them dead, he said.
Paramedic Kabaha Muayua was among the first responders at the site and described the horrific scene he encountered.
We could not help the first four stab victims. Following an inspection of the scene I spotted an infant of about three who still had a pulse. We engaged in lengthy resuscitation efforts but had to pronounce him dead, he said. The murder scene was shocking. Kids toys right next to pools of blood.
Paramedic Gil Moscowitz, who serves as MDA`s director of operations, said teams dispatched to the home discovered parents and three children who were brutally murdered.
The parents were lying next to each other in their room we found three bodies in the master bedroom; the two parents and a baby, he said.
Government must back settlers
Yesha Council Chairman Danny Dayan, who arrived at the site, appeared shocked by the brutal attack.
This is no doubt one of the most terrible attacks in recent years," he told the reporters on hand.
Words cannot describe the extent of the horror and pain, he said. Those tempted to think that the Palestinians ceased their acts of murder see that they do not shy away from any tactic and any Jewish victims, regardless of how young they are.
The time has come for the government to regain its senses and start backing up the settlement enterprise, which remains vulnerable on the frontlines, he said.
The settlement of Itamar, which is surrounded by Palestinian villages, has been the site of murderous attacks in the past. In June of 2002, a terrorist entered the community and opened fire, killing Rachel Shabo and three of her seven children, Neriya, Tzvika, and Avishai. Yossi Twito, who commanded the local security team at the settlement, was also shot to death in the attack.
Horror in Samaria: A terrorist infiltrated the West Bank settlement of Itamar, southeast of Nablus, early Saturday and stabbed five family members to death.
The shocking attack occurred around 1 am as the terrorist entered the family home and murdered three children aged 11, 3, and a baby girl along with their parents. The victims were apparently sleeping as the killer came in.
Itamar residents reported that shots were heard in the area; the terrorist managed to flee the scene.
Three other children at the home, a 12-year-old girl and her two brothers, aged 6 and 2, were able to escape to a nearby house and inform their neighbors of the attack.
The terrorist who carried out the massacre cut the fence surrounding Itamar and entered the home of the victims through the window, an initial probe of the murder showed. Authorities could not immediately discount the possibility that more than one attacker was involved in the murder.
'Toys next to pools of blood'
Following an initial report of the incident, large IDF and police forces rushed to the site. The Air Force also joined the effort to track down the terrorist, deploying numerous aircraft in the area. The nights sky was lit up with flares, as special IDF and police forces were called in to assist in the manhunt.
The IDF Spokesmans Office said troops are scouring the area in search of the suspect. The IDF is performing inspections at all crossing points set up in the region.
Magen David Adom ambulance service teams pronounced the victims dead at the scene. MDA spokesman Zaki Heller said the ambulance service got a call around 1 am and dispatched large teams of paramedics to the area.
When rescue forces entered the house they encountered a very difficult sight...There were five people there who were hurt. We could do nothing but pronounce them dead, he said.
Paramedic Kabaha Muayua was among the first responders at the site and described the horrific scene he encountered.
We could not help the first four stab victims. Following an inspection of the scene I spotted an infant of about three who still had a pulse. We engaged in lengthy resuscitation efforts but had to pronounce him dead, he said. The murder scene was shocking. Kids toys right next to pools of blood.
Paramedic Gil Moscowitz, who serves as MDA`s director of operations, said teams dispatched to the home discovered parents and three children who were brutally murdered.
The parents were lying next to each other in their room we found three bodies in the master bedroom; the two parents and a baby, he said.
Government must back settlers
Yesha Council Chairman Danny Dayan, who arrived at the site, appeared shocked by the brutal attack.
This is no doubt one of the most terrible attacks in recent years," he told the reporters on hand.
Words cannot describe the extent of the horror and pain, he said. Those tempted to think that the Palestinians ceased their acts of murder see that they do not shy away from any tactic and any Jewish victims, regardless of how young they are.
The time has come for the government to regain its senses and start backing up the settlement enterprise, which remains vulnerable on the frontlines, he said.
The settlement of Itamar, which is surrounded by Palestinian villages, has been the site of murderous attacks in the past. In June of 2002, a terrorist entered the community and opened fire, killing Rachel Shabo and three of her seven children, Neriya, Tzvika, and Avishai. Yossi Twito, who commanded the local security team at the settlement, was also shot to death in the attack.
