Annual Pogrom in Jerusalem as Thousands of Settlers march chanting ‘Death to the Arabs’, ‘May Your Villages Burn’ and ‘A Jew is a Soul, an Arab is a Whore’

YouTube Collude with Zionism's Genocidal Racism By Deleting Videos of Their Crimes Under Hate Speech Policies

Pogrom against Palestinians by Jewish Settlers Jerusalem Day 29 May

Last Thursday 18 May the annual ritual of thousands of settlers being herded and protected by the Israeli Police through Damascus Gate in East Jerusalem took place. They chanted a variety of racist slogans, such as the delightful ‘Death to the Arabs’ whilst attacking any Palestinian they could lay their hands on.

It was an Israeli Labor government that instituted Jerusalem Day in 1968 as an assertion of Jewish Supremacy over Arab Jerusalem.

Last year it was Security Minister Omar Bar Lev, a member of the Israeli Labor Party, who gave authorisation to the Flag March and the inevitable pogrom through East Jerusalem.

You will remember that the Israeli Labor Party was part of the so-called Government of Change with Benny Gantz, who outlawed 6 Palestinian Human Rights groups at the stroke of a pen, including the highly dangerous Defence for Children International – Palestine. Whatever else it was the Change Government represented no change for Palestinians.

This year the march was led by Israel’s Police Minister, the neo-Nazi Police Minister Itamar Ben Gvir of Otzma Yehudit, Jewish Power. In the West the very term ‘Jewish Power’ is considered an anti-Semitic phrase but not in Israel where it is a reality.

Even Moshe Yalon, the right-wing former Likud Defence Minister has characterised Ben Gvir as ‘Mein Kampf in reverse’ but the yellow press and the craven BBC cannot bring themselves to describe in simple words the record of Gvir, who had on his living room wall until recently the picture of Baruch Goldstein, the man who massacred 29 Palestinian worshippers in the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron in 1994. This is what Zionism has evolved into.

Bogi Yaalon, "Mein Kampf," reversed and Jewish Supremacy ideology infiltrated the government

Western Hypocrisy

Just imagine what the BBC and the British press would say if in Iran, which has the second largest Jewish community in the Middle East after Israel, some 25,000, thousands of  Muslims were to march through the Jewish parts of Tehran chanting ‘Death to the Jews’.

You would have every talking head in the media condemning this in no uncertain words and talking of a second holocaust yet when it comes to the equivalent behaviour by Israeli Jewish settlers and their government supporters, there is absolute silence – not just by the British media but the New York Times, Washington Post and the rest of the prostitute press in the West.

Indeed last year we had the spectacle of the BBC’s disgusting racist, their correspondent in Israel, Yolande Knell, reporting that the pogrom through East Jerusalem was a ‘festive’ event. ‘It feels like a party’ this creature twittered into a microphone.

there are just thousands upon thousands of young Israelis like this that I’ve seen around the city the mood of them is really jubilant, it’s festive, it feels like a party.

As I wrote at the time:

‘One wonders what Yolande would have made of the Nazi pogrom Kristallnacht in November 1938. Perhaps she would have been caught up in the enthusiasm of the Nazis’ Sturmabteilung (SA) as they burnt Jewish synagogues and smashed Jewish shop windows, declaring that

there are just thousands upon thousands of young Germans. The mood of them is really jubilant, it’s festive, it feels like a party.

BBC Reporter Yolande Knell reporting on the Zionist pogrom on Jerusalem Day May 2022

But it’s not just the BBC and the British press who ignore Israel’s pogromists. The social media companies do their bit to help keep people in ignorance.

At 1.02 in the morning of 13 May I received notice from Youtube that they were taking down the video below

Jerusalem Day Demonstration by Settlers - Shireen is a Whore because ‘ we think it violates our hate speech policy.’ They went on to justify their crass decision because ‘it's important to us that YouTube is a safe place for all.’

However I was informed that ‘If you think we've made a mistake, you can appeal and we’ll take another look.’

Now I have had experience of this kind of thing before. Not so long they took down a similar video. On that occasion it was a group of Israeli right-wingers shouting at Jewish demonstrators against house demolitions in Sheikh Jarrar in Jerusalem that ‘Hitler was right’ and telling them that they should have died in Auschwitz.

Despite me telling them that far from advocating what was in the video I was exposing the Zionists as the racists and fascists that they were Youtube turned down my appeal. I could have saved my breath because Youtube aren’t interested in exposing Zionist and Israeli racism. Their sole interest was in preventing the exposure of racism –all under the rubric of ‘hate speech’! 

In reality Youtube’s ‘hate speech’ policy is a policy to protect hate speech.  This is Youtube's commitment to anti-racism. We should not be surprised since Google is developing artificial intelligence software for use by Israel’s military for the purposes of surveillance. So I had no illusions in their ‘appeal procedure’ which is in reality a rubber stamping procedure.

In my appeal I said:

Are you stupid?  Do you deliberately conflate EXPOSING racism with ADVOCATING racism?

The video 'Jerusalem Day Demonstration by Settlers-Shireen is a Whore' doesn't support pogroms against the Palestinians by Jewish settlers but OPPOSES their racism.

Are you really that stupid?  Can you not tell the difference between exposing racism and supporting it?  

Let us assume you are not that stupid, which is possible. Then there is only one conclusion to be drawn from your removing this video and that is that you want to protect the very racists that I am exposing. In which case it is YOU not me who is guilty of breaching your 'hate speech guidelines'

In which case the disgusting hate mongers and racists are the morons who removed this video who do not even have the honesty to admit to their racism

Suffice to say this appeal did not succeed, thus proving that the Youtube Moderators are indeed racist scum.

Below is an excellent article on Mondoweiss by Mariam Barghouti about the political implications of Jerusalem’s annual flag march.

The Flag March is part of the Zionist war on Jerusalem

The Flag March represents the Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the imposition of Israeli colonial dominance over Jerusalem. It is part of the Zionist forever war on Jerusalem.

By Mariam Barghouti May 22, 2023

On Thursday, May 18, Israeli settler groups held the annual “Flag March” in Jerusalem. The march, or the “dance of flags,” was first inaugurated in 1968, a year after Israeli forces occupied East Jerusalem and took over Palestinian, Syrian, and Egyptian lands in the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and the Sinai. Israeli officials such as the National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich joined this year’s march, both members of the new far-right Israeli coalition.

In what the Israeli state calls “Jerusalem Day,” the Flag March signals a settler emphasis on the “reunification of Jerusalem.” However, as Palestinians insistent on remaining in their homes, from Sheikh Jarrah, to the Old City, and to neighboring towns in East Jerusalem, the Flag March has become an attempt to drive out the last remaining Palestinians from Jerusalem.

In a statement, the spokesperson for the Palestinian presidential office, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, warned that the Flag March could lead to an “explosion,” with tensions already high amidst Israel’s increased violence in Jerusalem. In a statement to the press, the Palestinian prime minister, Mohammad Shtayyeh, condemned the march as an attempt to consolidate the Judaization and conquest of Jerusalem further, emphasizing that “the Palestinians will continue to confront the policies of the occupation, no matter how heavy the price.”

However, for Palestinians in Jerusalem, the Flag March is not only a political and military move meant to solidify Israel’s stranglehold over Jerusalem but is a day of guaranteed violence and settler abuse.

The backdrop

The ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem began in 1948 with the massacres committed in Deir Yassin, Ein Karem, Abu Ghosh, and other towns surrounding Jerusalem. The military annexation of East Jerusalem began in 1967, and the judicial solidification of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel took effect on July 30, 1980. That summer, the Jerusalem Law was added to the Israeli Basic Law (a set of Israeli laws adopted in lieu of a constitution). The law declared Jerusalem, including East Jerusalem, as the capital of Israel. This further allowed the Israeli government to expand its jurisdiction over Palestinian lives in the city. This also violated international law and the internationally recognized status of East Jerusalem as occupied Palestinian territory. It is what laid the foundation for sparking the First Intifada of 1987. In December 2000, less than a year after the eruption of the Second Intifada, the Israeli Knesset made another amendment to the Jerusalem Law affirming sole Israeli power and jurisdiction over the city.

“Since the reunification of Jerusalem in 1967,” the website of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs reads,

 “the city has become a haven for coexistence and revitalized religious and cultural expression for all faiths. Freedom of worship at all holy sites is guaranteed for the faithful of all three monotheistic religions, the first time in modern history that this has been the case.”

For Palestinians, this so-called “coexistence” has meant surviving the draconian policies of Israeli authorities known for persecuting Palestinians, enforcing apartheid, and committing crimes against humanity. 

Recent Jerusalem escalations

The settler Flag March should be viewed within the context of an escalatory dynamic particular to Jerusalem, in which rightwing settler groups and the Israeli state have attempted to progressively shrink Palestinian rights to the city while expanding Israeli colonial encroachment into Palestinian spaces. This process of encirclement has not only included the takeover of homes in neighborhoods like Sheikh Jarrah or restrictions in areas like Silwan but has also extended to restricting religious and worshiping rights. This has led to chronic and repeated flare-ups in the Old City and local and regional tensions intensifying.

In the first three months of this year, more than a dozen settler attacks were recorded against churches in Jerusalem, while police violations against Muslim worshippers and the systemic targeting of youth in the Old City intensified compared to previous years

On April 15, Israeli forces denied Palestinian Christians from participating in Easter worship by banning them from entry into the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and beating them. “The occupation, through such policies, claims that Jerusalem is theirs,” Archbishop Atallah Hanna told Mondoweiss following the police attack on the Church of Holy Sepulchre during Easter.

Just ten days before that, Israeli forces invaded the third holiest site in Islam, the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in the heart of the Old City, attacking and assaulting peaceful worshippers while they prayed. Hundreds of worshippers were arrested during the month of Ramadan, as almost 47 worshippers from the West Bank were arrested and held in detention for days and exposed to mistreatment and abuse by Israeli police, according to eyewitnesses who spoke to Mondoweiss. Meanwhile, in the West Bank, settlers have carried out arson attacks against Palestinian towns and villages, described even by the Israeli military as pogroms.

The “reunification of Jerusalem” celebrated by the Flag March therefore represents the Zionist promise for the ethnic cleansing to which the Palestinians of Jerusalem have been subjected since 1967, what the Mondoweiss Palestine Bureau has called the “Zionist forever war on Jerusalem.” 

This war has taken on many forms and has passed through several iterations. In 2017, Israeli policymakers attempted to mute the call to prayer for Muslim worshippers in Jerusalem and to set up metal detectors outside the entrance to the Aqsa compound, which resulted in the Bab al-Asbat uprising; in 2020, Israeli police and authorities began targeting bread bakeries in Jerusalem, noting that Jerusalem’s ka’ak bread is an emblem of Palestinian presence and identification in Jerusalem; in May 2021, settlers invaded the Aqsa compound, and again in April 2022, resulting in the beating and arrests of hundreds in both years.

Every year since May 1968, Palestinians in Jerusalem have had to fight for their homes and the right to assembly and freedom of worship. For Palestinians, the Flag March means surviving the violence of the Israeli state and its settlers yearly and refusing to be ethnically cleansed.

Israeli Police prepare for the closure of Old City of Jerusalem for the Flag March near the Chain Gate entrance, May 18, 2023. (Photo: Alaa Dayeh/Mondoweiss)

Holding a city captive

“[The first time I remember the Flag March] was around ten years ago,” Israa Abu Ahmad, a 29-year-old mother of two, told Mondoweiss on the day of this year’s march on May 18. “My sister was young, maybe 12 or 13, and was filming during the Flag March,” Abu Ahmad continued. “The [Israeli armed forces] then began to beat her, beat her a lot. She was a child.”

Incidents of the kind suffered by Israa are the norm for Palestinians in the Old City during the annual march. While Israelis prepare for ease of movement through the alleyways of the Old City and the streets of larger Jerusalem, Palestinians are herded through metal pathways erected around the city to ensure every Palestinian step is controlled and directed. Like most Palestinian residents of the Old City and its surrounding areas, Israa had to remain home with her children, fearing the likely violence from settlers.

“It’s as though we keep the children in a prison.”

Israa Abu Ahmad

In anticipation of settler and police violence, medical personnel and journalists were present around the city throughout the day to respond to and document developments. At approximately 3:00 p.m., before the march began, Israeli border police began manhandling, assaulting, and impeding medical staff in the area, according to on-the-ground documentation by Mondoweiss. According to reporters on the ground, several journalists were also attacked throughout the day.

Israeli Police obstruct medical personnel from moving around the Old City, Damascus Gate entrance, May 18, 2023. (Photo: Alaa Dayeh/Mondoweiss)

For the majority of the day, Palestinians were forced to remain inside their homes. Even children were denied the space to play. “I have my children here inside. It’s so hard to keep children locked in the house for 24 hours,” Israa told Mondoweiss. “It’s as though we keep [the children] in a prison.”

“I can’t play outside today, because they will hit me,” Rafeef Abu Ahmad, Israa’s 6-year-old daughter, told Mondoweiss. 

At that moment, banging was heard outside the house. “Do you see how [settlers] are beating?” Rafeef said, referring to the Jewish-Israeli youth rampaging outside her home near the Aqba Khaldiyeh area of the Old City. 

Just moments earlier, the 6-year-old had witnessed a mob of at least 15 Jewish settlers gathered around a man in her neighborhood, kicking him in the abdomen and continuing to beat him in a circle in what can only be described as an attempted lynching. Three Israeli police officers were on the scene, refusing to arrest the Jewish youth that assaulted the man and instead allowing them to continue on their rampage through the city. 

“In a previous Flag March, my shoulder was broken and, at the time my son was asleep by the window near my aunt’s house,” Israa continued, narrating the different years and forms of violence she and her family witnessed. 

“Settlers started to come out with liquor bottles across the windows and I was afraid for my son, so I went to him and carried him,” she told Mondoweiss. “By carrying my son, the bones in my shoulder broke to pieces. I had to do surgery and get platinum implants.” Israa’s son was nearly two years old at the time.

The impact this has on Palestinian Jerusalemites is also economic. These restrictions, especially during the Flag March, have forced Palestinians to close their shops early to make way for the rampaging settlers. Israa is one of them. “We closed all our shops today. I sew, and I have work. Today I closed the shop because I’m afraid they’ll attack,” she told Mondoweiss.

The day before the march on Wednesday, May 17, the Israeli police sent text messages to Palestinian residents of the Old City and shop owners, signed by the captain of the Israeli public police in the Jerusalem area, Shadi Basis. 

“Tomorrow will be the Flag March for the reunification of Jerusalem, from Damascus Gate on Waad St. to the Wailing Wall. Please take out all your cars and vehicles until 3 p.m., and shop and grocery owners must close at 3:00 p.m. Please adhere in order to obstruct collision and harm,”

Fear to document

The impact of this constant assault on Palestinian existence goes beyond the economic. It becomes an instrument of silencing Palestinians and punishing those who resist.

“We are not as strong as them, so we’re afraid,” a shop-owner in the Old City, who requested to remain anonymous, told Mondoweiss. “If the police ask us for something and we don’t do it, we become targets,” he said. “We’re afraid to have our voices recorded because of the threat that [Israeli police] will carry out revenge acts in different ways.”

“We are living in terror inside the city.”

Um Abed, shop owner

The fear witnessed in individuals and families approached by Mondoweiss for recorded interviews highlights the ways in which Israel punishes exposure. At least a dozen shop owners and residents in the city explicitly informed Mondoweiss they were afraid of repercussions from the Police if they spoke out.

“We are living in terror inside the city,” Umm Abed, a resident of the Old City and small shop owner, explained to Mondoweiss on Thursday morning, as preparations for the march ensued. “But the residents of the city cannot take this on. The youth are being banned from Aqsa, and they are either arrested or denied entry.”

“All the years that have passed are a series of assaults,” Umm Abed continued. “People come and document but all we have to protect us is God.”

Umm Abed, a shop owner in the Old City of Jerusalem .(Photo: Alaa Dayeh/Mondoweiss)

“All these marches are provocations,” Nada Khader, 53, told Mondoweiss on Thursday morning as police moved to ensure the alleyways were empty of the visible presence of its Palestinian inhabitants. Khader has been living in the Old City ever since Israeli authorities demolished her home in Beit Hanina twice — the first time in December last year, and the second in January. A widow and a mother of seven, Khader continues to face slow expulsion from Jerusalem.

“They are provoking us Jerusalemites in order to create problems and for them to try and prove their presence to say that Jerusalem is theirs,” she said.

Alaa Dayeh contributed to this article.

Kristallnacht in Hawara – The Israeli Army and Settlers Join Forces in a Pogrom

Smotrich’s call to ‘wipe out’ Hawara is reminiscent of the SS Generals who Wiped Out Lidice & Oradour-sur-Glane

Israel is Becoming a Fascist State

Those who cavil at the comparison between the attack on Huwara on 27 February and Kristallnacht, should read the remarks of Bezalel Smotrich, the Finance and Defence Minister in charge of the Civil Administration in the West Bank with his call to wipe out Huwara. Smotrich is a Zionist version of Nazi Governor Hans Frank of Poland.

Smotrich was asked at a financial conference why he had ‘liked’ a tweet by Samaria Regional Council deputy mayor Davidi Ben Zion that called “to wipe out the village of Huwara today.” Smotrich’s response was: “Because I think the village of Huwara needs to be wiped out. I think the State of Israel should do it,”

The pogrom in Hawara last Sunday was horrific by any measure but it was not unprecedented. The Labour Zionists did far worse in 1947-8 during the Nakba. It is one of the few achievements of the Israeli state that the pogroms that Jews experienced in the diaspora are now being visited on the Palestinian population.

There was no mention by the Board of Deputies in its statement of the complicity and participation of the Israeli army in the attacks. This too was a feature of pogroms in Czarist Russia and Kristallnacht.

Oradour-sur-Glane which the Nazis wiped out

The Board painted the pogrom in Harawa as the result of the killing of two settlers brothers by Palestinians. What it didn’t say was that the killing of the settlers was the result of the murder spree by the Israeli army which resulted in the death of 35 Palestinians, including 8 children, in January alone.

To the Zionists Palestinian violence is always the cause not the consequence. But we should not fall into the trap of believing that everything was rosy in the garden until Hawara.

In the last ‘change’ government in Israel, in which the Israeli Labor Party and Meretz were partners, when Security Minister Omar Bar Lev criticised settler attacks on Palestinians he was immediately rounded on by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked.

“They serve as a protective wall for all of us and we must protect them in word and a deed.” Tweeted Naftali Bennett. Shaked described the settlers as ‘the salt of the earth’ and called Bar Lev, in his talks with State Department as ‘confused’.

Two settlers were gunned down by a Palestinian assailant in revenge for the murder of 11 Palestinians and the wounding of 102 in Nablus. A mob of 400 settlers, armed to the teeth, invaded Hawara. Instead of preventing them the army joined forces with the pogromists.

Cars and homes are torched by settlers in the West Bank town of Huwara on February 26, 2023. 

36 houses were burnt along with 15 cars and 9 families were evacuated. The settlers set a house on fire when a Palestinian family was inside but Israeli security forces rescued the family. 37-year-old Sameh Aqtash died from gun shots to the stomach and another is seriously injured from head wounds after being hit by a rock. The Palestinian Red Crescent reported that 98 Palestinians have been wounded along with damage to 3 ambulances.

The military claimed that soldiers were not involved in the killing of Aqtash but his family has claimed otherwise. One thing is clear, there is no appetite in the Israeli state to investigate who did kill him.

Limor Son Har-Melech MK of Otzma Yehudit went to Hawara on Sunday evening in order to:

“support the just demands of hundreds of West Bank residents who are protesting and demanding security.”

Of one thing we can be sure. If 400 Palestinians had attacked a Jewish settlement then there would have been dozens of dead and injured. This is Zionist racism in all its glory.

Knesset member Zvika Fogel from Otzma Yehudit declared

"Yesterday a terrorist came from Huwara – Huwara is closed and burnt. That is what I want to see. Only thus can we obtain deterrence,"

Fogel is Chairman of the Knesset National Security Committee. He said in an interview that:

"The act that the residents of Judea and Samaria carried out yesterday is the strongest deterrent that the State of Israel has had since Operation Defensive Shield. After a murder like yesterday, villages should burn when the IDF does not act,"

Later on Monday morning, Fogel explained that he would prefer that the Israeli army and not settlers be responsible for demolishing Harawa. When asked if he looked favourably upon what happened, Fogel said that he "looks very favourably upon" the results.

Likud MK Tally Gotliv refused to condemn the pogrom, saying she “could not judge people when they mourn.” Imagine the fate of a Palestinian who wrote  something similar about Jewish Israelis.

Palestinians inspect a damaged house and scorched cars in the town of Huwara, near the West Bank city of Nablus, February 27, 2023. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

What was the reaction of Netanyahu? Did he condemn it? Not at all. What he did, as Huwara burned, was to release a video message asking Israelis “not to take the law into their own hands” and to “let the IDF and the security forces do their job.”

As Orly Noy wrote when Israeli officials call on settlers not to take the law into their own hands against Palestinians, they are actually saying 'let the army do the job for you.'

Over the past years there has been an alarming rise of joint settler-soldier militias across the West Bank as they murder and terrorise Palestinian communities. Those same militias left Huwara burning. Immediately following the killing of the two settlers, the Israeli army shut down the two entrances to Huwara and allowed the settler mob to enter town by foot, doing nothing to prevent the ensuing pogrom.

In a TikTok video settlers are seen handing out food to the soldiers stationed at the town’s entrances, which the soldiers gladly took and warmly thanked them for.

Netanyahu did not hesitate to remind people that the army had “eliminated dozens of terrorists” in recent weeks, in other words the massacres committed by Israeli forces in Jenin and Nablus. President Isaac Herzog, too, made a similar plea to the settlers.

Netanyahu and other spokespersons are accepting that collective punishment is acceptable. All they are asking is for the Israeli army to be allowed to commit the atrocities.

Israeli settler colonialism and the new government

At over 700,000, the settlers have achieved a critical mass. Their aim is the theft of more Palestinian land with the intention of driving Palestinians off the land and into the townships as a prelude to expulsion. It is that, not the killing of settlers, which drives Israeli settler colonialism.

The phenomenon known as “settler violence” is an endless sequence of assaults. Israeli Ministers are playing their part in stoking the flames. Smotrich too later echoed Netanyahu’s and Herzog’s plea urging settlers not to take the law into their own hands.

Israeli settlers and soldiers face off with Palestinian residents during an army closure road leading up to the West Bank town of Huwara, a day after a settler rampage in the town, Feb. 27, 2023. (Oren Ziv)

Anshel Pfeffer, a mainstream Zionist at Ha’aretz, described how Palestinian Rabia Domedi, 22, was with his mother and younger sisters in their home on the northern edge of Hawara when settlers began stoning their windows and set the neighboring house alight.

“They’ve thrown stones at our house before, but I’ve never seen so many of them. They came from different directions and the soldiers in the street didn’t try to stop them.”

Pfeffer wrote how

there were plenty of excuses from the Israel Defense Forces, but no real explanation for how they had lost control, for five hours, of a town on the main highway to Nablus, and one where there are constant military patrols.

That was because

the army’s main task during those hours had been to hunt down the two brothers’ killer’ not protect Palestinians.’

Hawara has some 7,000 residents living along Route 60, just south of Nablus. The regional Samaria Brigade headquarters is ‘literally around the corner at Horon Camp, just two minutes’ drive away.’

Pfeffer described how senior officers, including IDF Chief of Staff Herzl Halevi, were soon on the scene.

‘And yet the rampaging, which began at just after 6 P.M., continued until shortly before midnight…. The settlers’ march in response to the killings had been announced well in advance – including its route – on social media.

Imagine that in response to the killing of a Palestinian it had been decided to march on a nearby settlement and burn a few buildings and attack the residents. What would have been the army’s response? Live fire would have been used without a second’s thought. Pfeffer wrote:

The reluctance of the IDF to confront settler violence was evident to the south of Hawara as well, where hundreds of settlers, mainly youngsters, defied the army’s orders and occupied the illegal outpost of Evyatar – the scene of on-and-off confrontations for nearly two years now.

A Border Police checkpoint blocked the narrow road winding up to the hilltop, but officers didn’t try to stop the settlers streaming up just a few meters from the road. On Monday morning, officers went up to start evicting them in a desultory fashion that lasted well into the afternoon. A settler and police officer both used the same words – “We’re playing hide-and-seek until everyone gets tired” – to describe events there.

As Pfeffer admitted it’s tempting to attribute the pogrom in Harawa to the new far-right coalition

But that’s much too easy. Violence and impunity have been a feature of daily life in the West Bank for many years.

It was when Benny Gantz was Defence Minister for two and a half years that settler violence reached new peaks. It didn’t start two months ago when Gantz made way for Yoav Gallant.

Gallant arrived in Hawara on Monday morning. The media filmed him at the site of the killing of the two brothers, far from any of the burnt-out Palestinian homes. Most of his statement dealt with the need to fight terror and capture the killer of the settlers. His only reference to the pogrom was an appeal not “to not take the law in your own hands and let the IDF deal with it.” As Pfeffer observed,

Not one minister has said a word actually condemning the settler rampage. They didn’t even say there was anything wrong with what any of them did, except for not letting the army get on with its job.’

The Israeli security establishment gave up trying to fight settler violence several governments ago. Sunday night in Hawara was just the inevitable result of a long, ongoing process. No one should have been surprised.

Far-right Otzma Yehudit lawmaker Zvika Fogel.Credit: Danny Shem-Tov, Knesset Spokesperson's Office

Amir Fakhoury and Meron Rapoport warned that this could be Israel’s “second Nakba government.” That is certainly what most members of the coalition would like to see. The real question is how to effect it. Israel’s Police Minister Ben Gvir was a supporter of Kach which believed in expelling all Arabs. Now he ‘only’ supports the deportation of ‘Arab terrorists’ but to Gvir all Arabs are terrorists.

Since the start of the year more than 60 Palestinians in the West Bank have died, the deadliest in the territory in two decades. The government has expedited plans for settlement expansion and pushed through legislation that would revoke the citizenship and residency of Palestinians. During the Huwara attack, Knesset members pushed forward a bill to legalize the death penalty which has now received its first reading.

Ben-Gvir also demanded that the illegal settlement of Evyatar, illegal even by Israeli standards, which was evacuated in 2020 but reoccupied during the night, should stay.

In Israel itself there was a small demonstration of hundreds in Tel Aviv Against the pogrom. This demonstration was attacked by a 19 year old thug with a pepper spray. A 70-year-old woman was taken to Hospital with facial burns.  Two of the protesters were reportedly arrested. Thousands of Israeli Palestinians also held a demonstration.

Demonstrates in Tel Aviv tonight Credit: Tomer Appelbaum

It is Gideon Levy of Ha’aretz who appreciated the significance of the attack on Hurawa in an article Israeli Settlers’ Hawara Pogrom Was a Preview of Sabra and Chatila 2. What we saw in Harawa is only the beginning. Israel has a genocidal government that western leaders from Biden to Sunak, not forgetting Starmer, will do their best to excuse whatever their atrocities.

Amos Harel, Ha’aretz’s Defence Correspondent wrote that The Lions’ Den, which the security establishment thought it had overcome some four months ago, is alive and kicking. The operatives killed and arrested were replaced by new ones. What was once described derisively by Israeli sources as “a bunch of punks” now has real stature in Nablus unlike the discredited Palestinian Authority.

This is the significance of what is happening. A new Palestinian resistance is arising. No one is under any illusions about the cost in blood but Palestinians have no alternative but to fight.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, last week.Credit: Olivier Fitoussi

Harel wrote that:

Some two months after the inauguration of Netanyahu’s government, it's clear that Palestinian terrorism isn't particularly impressed by political changes in Israel. The tough rhetoric, such as the revival of efforts to advance the death penalty for terrorists, will surely not help matters….

The situation in the West Bank is too sensitive, and the Palestinian Authority is too weak, for the tide of violence to be stemmed with a bit of external pressure and promises of American gestures toward the administration in Ramallah.

The weakness of the Palestinian leadership hinders its security apparatus from making good on promises made to American officials. If the PA police sergeants or petty officers fear that the Authority might collapse in a matter of months, they have zero incentive to take on the Lions’ Den militants.

In other words the Quisling Palestinian Authority is losing its ability to act as subcontractor to Israel’s occupation.

IDF soldiers at the scene of a Palestinian shooting attack on an Israeli car at the Hawara checkpoint in the West Bank, on Sunday.Credit: Majdi Mohammed /AP

Last week Israel took another significant step towards annexation, with the agreement dividing authority between ministers Gallant and Smotrich.

Smotrich will now hold most of the powers, allowing him to shape the map of construction in the West Bank, further entrenching the two separate legal systems, for Israelis and Palestinians.

What it will also do is make it clear that the West Bank has effectively been annexed and that Apartheid is Israel’s official policy.

Israel Releases the Pogromists

A report in the Times of Israel speaks volumes. ‘All suspects in Huwara settler rampage freed; IDF chief vows to probe ‘lawlessness’. Not however Jewish ‘lawlessness’. Three settlers were put under house arrest and 5 were simply released.

If ever proof were needed that two sets of laws operate, one for settlers and another for Palestinians then this is proof. There must be  hundreds of photographs of the settler mob yet all those arrested, a mere 8, have been released.

Those who perpetrated Kristallnacht, the Nazi pogrom of November 9/10 1938 were also given immunity from prosecution. In Russia in the Kishinev pogrom, it was those who defended themselves who were attacked by the Police, not the pogromists. So too in Hawara.

We should also note the silence of the Board of Deputies which never misses an opportunity to condemn the Palestinians and justify Israeli repression. All in the name of British Jews. It condemned the ‘killing of two Israeli brothers by Palestinian terrorists’ and noted the ‘subsequent rampage by extremist settlers that resulted in the killing of a Palestinian civilian.’

The murder of a Palestinian was not Jewish terror, merely extremism. Still this is better than its total silence over the Israeli army’s murder of 11 civilians in Nablus preceded by 11 civilians in Jenin. The BOD is an apologist for Israeli war crimes.

When it came to the murder, by Israeli snipers, of unarmed civilians at the Gaza fence the BOD put the blame on Hamas, not those who fired the shots.

US Jewish groups were little better. Whilst condemning the ‘Huwara settler rampage’ they managed to avoid all mention of Netanyahu and the government which had encouraged the settler pogrom.

As the Times of Israel noted the Anti-Defamation League,

‘when asked to elaborate on its statement, condemned lawmakers who incite violence, while avoiding mentioning the fact that they are members of the governing coalition.’

William Daroff of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, did not mention the Israeli government either.

‘The Jewish organizations approached for this story did not reply when asked what they planned to do if Netanyahu fails to take action.’

Amazingly the Jewish Federations of North America commended “the Government of Israel for speaking out quickly to lower tensions.” And Israel lobby group AIPAC tied the settlers’ vigilantism to Palestinian terrorism.

vigilante action cannot be tolerated,” its spokesperson said. “Terrorism will not decline as long as the Palestinian leadership continues incitement, rewards terrorism with payments to terrorists and their families, and encourages the public celebration of Israeli fatalities.”