Jewish fanatics in the West Bank shot and killed a Palestinian and then stabbed his father. Jewish settlers also sexually attacked a Palestinian man, by pulling down his pants and briefs and zip tying his genitalia. One Jewish settler group boasted that they attacked forty Palestinian communities. As we read in the New York Times:
When Israeli settlers attacked his West Bank village, Moatasem Odeh saw his son Amir, 28, fatally shot. Then he was stabbed repeatedly and beaten unconscious.
The attack in Qusra, on March 14, was one of many in a wave of brutal violence in the West Bank over the past two months.
Villagers might have once driven the attackers away by throwing stones, said Mr. Odeh, 46, but settlers now routinely carry guns. “We are helpless,” he said, “and they know it.”
With the world’s attention focused on the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran and its proxies, extremist settlers acting with seeming impunity have intensified their attacks on Palestinians across the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Their campaign of violence and intimidation is emptying out entire villages and leaving countless Palestinians fearing what each nightfall might bring.
In the Jordan Valley, masked men sexually assaulted Suhaib Abualkebash, 29, and brutalized his extended family, children included.
Masked and wielding clubs, Mr. Abualkebash said, the settlers beat and kicked him, his father and the two female activists. Once they had used zip ties to bind the others by their wrists and feet, he said, they also did the same to him.
One assailant used a hunting knife to cut Mr. Abualkebash’s pants and then his underwear, he said.
His left eye still black and bloodied, he described the attack at the exact site where it happened.
On Wednesday, five days after the attack, discarded zip ties were still strewed on the ground. Mr. Abualkebash picked up the briefs he had been wearing from the floor of the tent. They had been sliced cleanly.
As the beating went on, he said, one attacker cinched a zip tie tightly around his penis. He showed a reporter the mark that remained from the injury.
The Times also reports on how settlers will boast of their attacks:
Extremist settlers even publicize their violent attacks. One online group boasted that, in the Hebrew month ending in April, the fight “against the Arab enemy in the Holy Land” had seen attacks in 40 Palestinian communities, including 79 people injured, 63 cars and 32 buildings torched, and hundreds of olive trees uprooted.
Settler gang leader Elisha Yered even boasts about how he and his “hilltop youth” group provoke clashes with Palestinian:
In a recent podcast interview, Elisha Yered, 25, a leader of a group of young settlers who call themselves the “hilltop youth,” talked about wanting to drive Palestinians out of their lands.
“There’s an enemy here waiting for the day he can kill me,” Mr. Yered said of Palestinians, adding, “I’ll do everything I can to remove him, to harm him, or at the very least, to deter him for the time being.”
He rejected the term “settler violence,” saying, “It’s self-defense,” but added that “the best defense, as you know, is offense.” This meant always pushing the Palestinians — with land grabs or attacks — to the point at which they feel they must fight back, he said. “We provoke clashes, and we take pride in it.”
The head of the IDF’s Central Command has recently spoken out against settler violence in the West Bank, defining it as “Jewish terror” and warning that it could trigger a violent Palestinian uprising.
Sources have told Haaretz that Maj. Gen. Avi Bluth said in a closed meeting that “it’s almost a miracle that the Palestinians are still indifferent” to the phenomenon, adding that they “won’t remain indifferent indefinitely.”
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According to Bluth, some sought to exploit the war with Iran to escalate violence. “There were people who thought this was the time for the apocalypse and therefore the moment to conquer Area A,” he said.
Referring to the perpetrators of Jewish terrorism, Bluth said, “I speak with them, and they aren’t particularly polite people. They tell me, ‘We’re the heroes of David, all of Israel’s deterrence is thanks to us.’ This is delusional.”
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“I know settlements in the West Bank where people say, ‘I’m against violence, but it’s time we deter,’ but they don’t realize the slippery slope this leads the state down,” he said.
Bluth warns that Israel is investigating Palestinian terrorism, but not Jewish terrorism:
According to Bluth, the IDF “is doing everything to reduce nationalist crime as much as possible.” However, he added, the army does not collect intelligence on Israelis, only on Palestinians.
Bluth mentioned a direct link between settler attacks against Palestinians and an increase in Palestinian terrorism. “We now know of [Palestinians] who were wounded by [Hilltop youth members’] price tag actions and immediately afterward went on to carry out attacks,” he said.
“These people don’t see Arabs as human beings and think it’s possible to burn people alive, to burn houses down with their occupants inside, and unfortunately, they do this frequently,” he said.
Bluth also pointed to how Israel’s judicial system does not adequately punish Jewish terrorists:
He then went on to sharply criticize what he described as the weakness of the judiciary and police in dealing with settler violence. “[In January], after the murder of Yehuda Shmuel Sherman [from the Alon Moreh settlement], they burned three Palestinian villages over three nights, one village each night.”
“Out of the hundred who burned houses and vehicles, we caught five masked individuals and brought them before a judge. What did he rule? Three days of house arrest, which is a joke. After 72 hours, they were released and attacked Border Police officers, and the judge issued a 30-day ban from the village. Is that deterrence? It’s ridiculous, because they went into another village,” he said.