Why settler pogroms are now sweeping the West Bank
JVL Introduction
It is difficult to find words to describe the reality in the West Bank today.
Jewish settler terrorism is so rampant that the heads of the Israeli security establishment have labeled the pogroms as “terrorism”. Palestinian civilians are becoming the central target, rather than merely acceptable collateral damage.
What we are witnessing is in part a struggle between the “official” security forces and the frustrated extremist settlers not over the goal – the steady erosion of the Palestinian presence in the land of Palestine – but over who should set the pace.
The goal in both cases is the elimination of a collective Palestinian identity. A genocide is taking place while governments everywhere sit back and allow it to happen.
Where, you may ask, is Labour’s voice calling out this ongoing, brazen violation of international law. The silence is deafening.
This article was originally published by +972 Magazine, In partnership with Local Call on Mon 26 Jun 2023. Read the original here.
Why settler pogroms are now sweeping the West Bank
Frustrated at the military’s pushback to their pogroms, settlers will continue upholding Jewish supremacy by any means necessary.
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I don’t think it’s so very difficult to understand what is happening now. You just have to read what Professor Ilan Pappe has written about 1948, events that mirror what is happening now. Here in Western Europe we would never ever accept a state that gave the sort of political priority to a religious or ethnic group that Israel gives to Jews. Such a state would be unable to join the EU. In Western Europe a state is supposed to treat all its citizens as equal. We know this often doesn’t happen in practice but at least it is the aim. In Israel it has never even be the aim. Had it been the aim there would be a Palestinian Right of Return to Israel.
How many “liberal Zionists” support a Palestinian Right of Return to Israel ?
If you deny that you say ethnic cleansing is OK and that is the root of the problem, today and in 1948.
This is simple ethnic cleansing. Something the UK (and others) bombed Serbia for, not that many years ago now. Few people now appear willing to call the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, “ethnic cleansing”. It’s a funny old world!
“The Palestinians are tolerated only if they assimilate into the landscape, becoming inanimate objects that forgo their collective identity.”
Wrong. They are not tolerated, period. The mass will is to erase them by one means or another, whether or not they assert their identity. Even the landscape that defines them is being twisted out of shape to accommodate Israel’s myth of itself. Olive groves are being torn down and alien trees planted to disguise all evidence of traditional Palestinian agricultural practices. Water is being diverted. Palestinian common land and homes are being bulldozed and replaced with settlements and rifle-ranges and Israeli theme-parks. Palestinians are expected to surrender to these desecrations without complaint. They have no option other than resistance.
It’s never ending for the Palestinians, the Nakba hasn’t ceased. The bulldozing of their farms and villages is going to keep going until there is no land for Palestinians to exist. This is ethnic cleansing and nothing is being done to stop it.
The BBC News had an article on the Jenin violence and murders and framed their sentences to make out that Israel wasn’t the guilty party.