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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.
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A Palestinian home in Sheikh Jarrah attacked by settlers. A two-year-old child was thrown from the window.1
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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:
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