|
The
Tip Of The Iceberg
Israeli Settler
Violence… A Colonialist Strategy?
And
the Police and Border Police… let the settlers (these “so
called” religious men) go with no arrests, despite the injuries
they’d inflicted. No arrests, no handcuffs... the police just let
them trickle out of the houses with their skullcaps neatly in place
and their sleeping bags stowed neatly in their backpacks. Each
one’s hand-gun neatly out of sight, though witnesses later told
how every single one was armed… Since one of them was a Cabinet
Minister (Minister of Tourism, Benny Elon), one must suppose they
felt protected by the law and even above it…
-
Israeli Committee
Against House Demolitions
|
|
|
Israeli
settler violence often goes unchecked. This picture shows
violence erupting in Hebron,
an incident in which an 8 year-old Palestinian girl was killed. |
I
am British and my country has a lot to answer for, not just in its
actions over Iraq, but in its imperial activities over centuries.
However, there is one thing I know for sure; if a member of Tony
Blair’s cabinet were found in a Pakistani neighborhood in London
watching his friends throw a baby out of the window, there would be
a huge public outcry and an immediate resignation, not to mention
criminal investigation.
Not
so in Israel. A few weeks ago, Tourism Minister (and Rabbi) Beni
Elon, was part of a gang of settlers that went to two Palestinian
homes in Sheikh Jarrah, East Jerusalem, in the dead of night,
trashed the houses and attacked the occupants. Eighty armed
religious settlers were involved in the assault on these two
Palestinian homes. Five Palestinians were hospitalized and the
buildings were trashed. A two-year-old Palestinian baby was thrown
from an upstairs window. The settlers even had the cheek to steal
one homeowner’s watch. Mr. Elon was accompanying his friends, from
the religious Zionist settler organization, Hamat Shalem, and does
not deny it. Where were the police, you might ask? They arrived but
no arrests were made. Mr. Elon and his friends just walked away.
In
response to previous articles I have had published on this site,
people have emailed me saying that I am one-sided, that I have been
duped by Palestinian propaganda. Dear reader, if you are not
convinced by such stories because you did not read about them in the
Israeli or international press, and you don’t want to hear it from
a British writer who has lived in Palestine for three years, or
Palestinians who are the victims themselves, go and look at Israeli
human rights organization reports. Of course the Palestinian victims
and witnesses could tell you, but my sources in this particular case
are Jewish Israeli human rights activists who went on the call of
the distressed Palestinians to see if they could intervene to stop
the attackers. Go to the website of the Israeli
Committee Against House Demolitions to read eyewitness
accounts of this attack and more. Read Btselem’s (Israeli
Information Center for Human Rights Abuses in the Occupied
Territories) reports
of settler violence. Look at the website of Rabbis
for Human Rights to see what Israeli Jewish human rights
activists are saying.
Israeli
settler violence against Palestinians, their homes and properties,
is not just limited to Hebron. It is on the streets of Jerusalem and
in the olive groves of the West Bank and Gaza. Let us take another
recent case, reported to me by an international citizen working for
a Jerusalem human rights organization.
Abu
Fouad owns two small tourist gift shops in the Muslim Quarter of
Jerusalem’s Old City, close to the entrance to the Haram al-Sharif
and the Wailing Wall. Like all other Palestinians relying on the
tourist trade, his business is devastated, and he can hardly afford
to pay property tax, let alone medical bills for his sick son.
|
|
|
A
Palestinian home in Sheikh Jarrah
attacked by settlers. A two-year-old child was thrown from the window.* |
A
founding tenet of Zionism is that Jerusalem is to be the undivided
capital of the Jewish state. The presence of hundreds of thousands
of Palestinians within the city poses a problem to that dream which
needs to be overcome. The Old City is a key focus of settler
activity that contributes to fulfilling that fundamental Israeli
goal of maintaining control of Jerusalem in its entirety. Settlers
are currently trying to expand the divided Old City’s Jewish
quarter northward, in order to surround the Dome of the Rock. Abu
Foaud’s shops are located in Sharia al-Wad, and settlers have
offered the shopkeeper, who cannot afford to pay his bills, the vast
sum of $7.5 million to buy the two shops. They also promised
American visas for him and all his family.
Israeli
authorities rarely make charges against settler violence. |
|
In
spite of his dire financial circumstances, Abu Fouad had the
strength to refuse. How could he sell his property, he said, to
enable settlers to continue to Judaize the entire city of Jerusalem?
But a refusal was not the right answer for the settlers. Over recent
weeks, settlers have come and smashed his goods, punched him so hard
that his teeth have fallen out, and destroyed even the small
potential he had for making an income. He is frightened of what will
come next.
Settler
violence occurs across the West Bank and Gaza, with Israeli
authorities rarely intervening or making charges. Take Hebron for
example. Settlers have rampaged regularly through the city and
destroyed the old market. I have seen the damage with my own eyes.
Abu Sharif took me round what was his blacksmith’s shop, next to
one of four Jewish settlements in the heart of the Palestinian city.
Now it is only a pile of rubble. He won’t rebuild it again. Last
time when he rebuilt, the settlers just burned it down again and
started using it as a rubbish dump.
Between
1987 and 2002, 138 Palestinians were killed by Israeli
citizens – 25 under the age of seventeen. |
|
Assaults
by settlers take many forms, from shooting Palestinian farmers in
olive groves, burning cars, destroying rooftop water tanks to the
burning down of the olive groves themselves. In some cases, the
results are fatal. Btselem reports that between 1987 and 2002, 138
Palestinians were killed by Israeli citizens, including 25 under the
age of seventeen. Baruch Goldstein’s 1994 killing of 29
Palestinians in the mosque in Hebron, was the bloodiest, but not an
isolated event.
It
goes without saying that any attack by a Palestinian on an Israeli
is punished with utmost severity by Israeli courts. Yet in contrast,
when Israelis attack Palestinians, the authorities “employ an
undeclared policy of leniency and compromise by the perpetrators,”
states Btselem, just one of many among many other NGOs and
independent observers concerned with Israel’s so-called
“democratic judicial system.”
The
latest report by Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group (PHRMG)
notes the serious debate amongst Palestinian human rights activists
of the value of attempting to report specific incidents of settler
crimes, when it is a result of a much bigger system of occupation.
Why bother report individual crimes to the Israeli judicial system,
when the whole state is in any case a fundamentally apartheid
country?
Settlers
are used for strengthening the foundations of an apartheid
state.
|
|
The
director of PHRMG, Bassem Eid, argues forcefully for the need to
continue with such initiatives, such as the settler crime hotline
run by his organization. “Professional human rights work has to be
comprehensive and complete, in order to convince the international
community of the unjust suffering the Palestinian people face
because of the Israeli occupation,” argues Eid in response to
criticism. “Furthermore, the interaction with the Israeli
authorities, which sometimes forces them to take action against
individual settlers, may give the settlers the feeling that they are
being monitored, and this, in turn, may reduce the phenomenon of
settler violence.”
Highlighting
individual crimes is an important step in attracting international
interest and alerting the international community to the
undemocratic nature of Israel’s apartheid system. However, it must
be understood that that is exactly what it is; an apartheid system.
By ignoring crimes of settlers, or actively facilitating them, the
IDF, the government, the police, the law courts, all the fundamental
Israeli institutions, are using settlers as a way to expand and
strengthen the foundations of a racist state. Beni Elon did not slip
through the net of Israeli justice: on the contrary, it is essential
for the perpetuation of a segregated system that such violence is
not only tolerated but supported at the highest echelons of
government, including the cabinet.
Occupation
and injustice would not end if Beni Elon is forced to resign and
violent settlers arrested and jailed. But drawing attention to the
tip of the iceberg might just draw people in, to investigate the
bloody colonialism that lies beneath.
Sources
on Settler Violence
*Photo from the Applied Research Institute –
Jerusalem (ARIJ).
Isabelle
Humphries
is researching the situation for Palestinian refugees living
inside the 1948 borders. She has an MA in Middle East Politics and
has worked for three years with Palestinian NGOs, and as a freelance
writer, on both sides of the 1967 border. You can reach her at innazareth@yahoo.co.uk
|
