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AFP PHOTO/JAAFAR ASHTIYEH
Aya and Al-Mughayer, north of Ramallah, arrived to pick olives— only to discover their olive trees bored into and poisoned, with branches drooping and the olives shriveled and black, instead of plump and green or purple. Settlers from the illegal Israeli outpost on top of a nearby hill had used chemicals to kill other trees last year. Residents of Burin, near the Yitzhar settlement in the northern West Bank, say settlers throw stones to keep them from working on their land. This October border police and Israel Defense Forces troops, as Palestinian farmers from the village of Burin inspect the remains of their olive trees after Jewish settlers from well as Palestinian po- the nearby illegal settlement of Yitzhar in the northern West Bank uprooted them on Sept. 1, 2010. lice, tried to guard villagers during the harvest. According to More than 300 settlers are reported to have dren. The authors write: “There is justification for killing babies if it is clear that Sarit Michaeli, spokeswoman for B’Tselem, expressed an interest in the course so far. which monitored the olive harvest, the set“A right-wing settler activist, Hor Nizri, they will grow up to harm us.” On Oct. 16, in his weekly Saturday night tlers have a “new strategy,” which is to who has clashed with the police in the past steal the olives right before they’re har- over the evacuation of settlements, has sermon, Israeli Sephardic leader Rabbi vested. They take advantage of the fact been put in charge of recruiting young set- Ovadia Yosef said non-Jews or Goyim that everyone knows the times when the tlers,” Cook writes. “He told the Yediot “were born only to serve us. Without that, guards are to be posted, she told the Israeli Aharonot newspaper that the program was they have no place in the world; only to daily Haaretz. “In a number of places ‘a historic reconciliation,’ adding: ‘We serve the People of Israel.” Embarrassed where Palestinians are not allowed for the want to fill the ranks of the police as we fill American Jews quickly condemned those racist remarks, but Rabbi Yosef is the spirrest of the year, when they come on the the ranks of the army.’ days allocated to them, they find the olives “His comments have sparked concern itual leader of Israel’s pro-settler and ultrahave disappeared,” she said. among Palestinian groups inside Israel that religious Shas Party, an increasingly powHundreds of trees have been stripped of the program is the first phase of an at- erful group in Prime Minister Binyamin olives this year, according to Rabbis for tempted settler ‘takeover’ of the police, Netanyahu’s ruling coalition. Settlers listen Human Rights, an Israeli organization that replicating their growing dominance of to their radical rabbis. At the end of Laura Ingall’s Little House tries to help farmers. Members of a new sections of the army.” unit from the Palestinian Authority’s MinIsrael released its first official figures on on the Prairie, her family is told that the istry of Agriculture worked to document the number of settlers in Israeli military land on which they built their log cabin, villagers’ complaints, counting poisoned combat units in September. About a third along with their well and fields, must be trees and taking samples for testing. of all officers in such units are settlers, up vacated by the settlers because it is not legally open to settlement. Pa agrees to from only 2.5 percent in 1990s. Recruiting Settlers as Police “Is it really credible that these religious leave the land and move the family to “the Believe it or not, Israel is now recruiting extremists who have been educated to hate Banks of Plum Creek” in Minnesota before police officers from the very same settler Palestinians in the West Bank are going to the Army forcibly evicts them. communities that have been tormenting behave differently when they police our That’s something nearly 500,000 Israelis Christians and Muslims in the West Bank. communities inside Israel?” asks Jafar who live in the illegal settlements of the According to a startling report by Farah, the director of Mossawa, an advo- West Bank and East Jerusalem should be Jonathan Cook published in the Palestine cacy center for the Palestinian minority in- doing right now. Ma and Pa—or Ima and Chronicle, their new special officer training side Israel. A settler police force roaming Aba—need to be figuring out where they’d course includes seven months of religious the Wild West Bank defies the imagination. like to settle next. To paraphrase journalist Radical rabbis in extremist settlements Helen Thomas, settlers need to move back studies in Elisha, an extremist West Bank settlement. “Although all the settlements help inspire settler brutality. Two rabbis in inside Israel’s pre-1967 borders, or return are illegal under international law, Elisha is Yitzhar, near Nablus, recently published a to the streets of Moscow, Baltimore, New one of dozens of wildcat settlements also il- book, The King’s Torah, which sanctions York and New Jersey—preferably without legal under Israeli law,” Cook observes. the killing of non-Jews, including chil- their torches and rifles. ❑ DECEMBER 2010
THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS
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