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From: arens@ISI.EDU (Yigal Arens)
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To: bashar@point.cs.uwm.edu
Subject: 130-Settler_Assaults_12_93
Status: O
Report No. 130 Israel Shahak, 10 December 1993
Assaults of the religious settlers upon the Palestinians
Since its its inception in June 1967, the Israeli conquest
regime in the Territories was marked by an enormous amount of
violence against the Palestinians. Almost immediately, that
regime became one of apartheid which in some respects has been
much stricter than South African apartheid at its worst. Until
1974, as long as the Territories were governed by Moshe Dayan as
Defense minister, one feature of modern jurisprudence was
scrupulously observed. The government then kept the monopoly of
violence in its own hands, letting no Jewish individuals assault
the Palestinians with impunity and letting no lawlessness
influence its policies. In this respect, Dayan was faithful to
the doctrine of Ben-Gurion which had rested on these two
principles and their strict enforcement.
This state of affairs changed only with the rise of Gush Emunim
in 1974-75 which, not by chance, coincided with the first
government of Rabin, in which Shimon Peres served as a Defense
minister, using this post to protect Gush Emunim's settlement and
violence. Since that time private violence has tended to mount
when the Defense ministry, responsible for the Territories, was
in the hands of Labor. Such a violence soared under the "national
unity" government of 1984-90, when Rabin was Defense minister,
plummeted under Arens [1990-1992] and flared up again after Rabin
came to power in July 1992. In both qualitative and quantitative
terms, it has acquired an unprecedented intensity since
mid-September of 1993. Anticipating it almost a year ago,
commentators close to the Israeli army, like Ze'ev Shiff,
expressed fears that the Territories may undergo "a process of
Lebanonization". Indeed, the last term seems now fit as a
description of the existing situation.
Violent assaults upon the Palestinians in the Territories are
in an overwhelming majority perpetrated by Jewish religious
settlers, and they have two peculiarities. In the first place
those assaults are overtly and avowedly aimed at perfectly
innocent randomly chosen individuals or groups of people. Their
avowed "purpose" is either "to relieve the feelings of distress
of the assaulters", or "to teach the Arabs a lesson", or else to
somehow "influence" the Palestinian population to prevent future
violence. (The first of these rationalization is recognized by
the Israeli government as valid.) Regardless of whether the
assaults cause injury to persons or "only" to property, they
imply the recourse to violence against innocent bystanders for
the sake of a political purpose. As such they can only be
regarded as acts of terror, and the God-fearing assaulters as
terrorists. Accordingly, the organizations responsible for these
assaults are terroristic organizations, even though they are
perfectly legal, and generously assisted financially and
otherwise by the Israeli government. Accordingly, the Israeli
government which not only tolerates the violence in question, but
also, as will be shown below, abets it, can only be defined as a
terror-supporting government. (By the way, when Israel accuses
the governments of Syria or Iran of "supporting terror" it uses
exactly the same argument.) But since the State of Israel could
never abet settler terrorism without tacit approval by the U.S.
(see Report 129), the latter should also be regarded as
supporting the settler terrorism in the Territories, even more so
after the Agreement between Israel and the PLO was signed on the
White House lawns than prior to that event.
Let me reiterate the (already quoted in Report 124) criteria by
which terror is defined by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Likud leader.
These criteria were quoted by Amnon Abramovitz ("Maariv", August
6, 1993), in the context of his comments on the "Accountability
Operation" of July 1993, which Abramovitz regarded as terroristic
but, as he clarified in another article of his ("Maariv", August
9), nevertheless justifiable, because "a government which
sincerely desires peace is entitled to oppress, to bomb and to
exile people". The proof that the Rabin government "sincerely
desired peace" was seen by Abramovitz in that "it negotiated with
the PLO". Abramovitz borrowed the definition from the book
bearing the title "How the West can win" [Hebrew translation]
which Netanyahu had edited in the late 1970s. In a preface he
himself wrote, Netanyahu defined terror as "violence aimed at
people who have no connection with the aims of the terrorists."
He also claims that "the terrorists consciously and deliberately
choose the civilians as their targets", that they "threaten and
intimidate the civilians in order to thus achieve a political
aim" and that "for a terrorist the civilians are the key
concept". As will be shown below, these definitions fit the
settler terrorism to perfection.
But before providing examples, an important point needs to be
made about the present character of the Hebrew press. Since about
mid-October, as soon as it became clear that the implementation
of the Agreement between Israel and the PLO encounters serious
obstacles, a part of the Hebrew press decided to help the Israeli
government by increasingly concealing and misrepresenting
anything that might belie optimism about "the new Middle East"
and euphoria, common right after the Agreement had been signed
last September. For the Israeli Jewish public, two main reasons
to get distressed are Palestinian guerilla activities and the
settler terrorism. Reporting the former cannot be suppressed
(although it is no longer done with as much hate propaganda as
before the Agreement.) But insofar as the latter is concerned,
the failures and misrepresentations in its coverage are possible,
and they are much resorted in order to keep optimism of the
public high. Three papers have changed in this respect most
notably: "Haaretz", "Davar" and "Al Hamishmar", i.e. the papers
which most zealously support Rabin's government and its policies.
Concretely, "Haaretz" has provided only few rather tame
descriptions of settler terrorism, with the exception of that
perpetrated by marginal groups like the splinters of Kahanism
("Kach"). And the two other named papers keep their mouth shut
even more tightly. However, "Yediot Ahronot" and the "Ha'olam
Ha'ze" weekly have consistently remained accurate and detailed in
their coverage of settlers' exploits, and to some extent the same
holds true for "Hadashot" and for the Jerusalem Friday paper "Kol
Ha'ir". As for "Maariv", it remains a class in itself. The
description of events it provides reflects the point of view of
religious settlers, and it often publishes articles of their
leaders. But its editorials, authored by a right-winger Yoseph
Lapid, invariably denounce settler violence against the
Palestinians. Moreover, "Maariv" publishes plenty of articles by
Uri Avnery and Hayim Hanegbi which always reflect Yasser Arafat's
positions. This explains the selectivity in the use of the
sources in this report.
Let me begin the description and analysis of typical incidents
of settler terrorism with an article by "Ha'olam Ha'ze"
correspondent Amit Gurevitz (November 17), which deserves
extensive coverage. Gurevitz happened to do his reserve service
in a paratrooper unit stationed in Hebron shortly before he wrote
his article which draws much from the author's personal
experience, including his conversations with fellow soldiers,
most of whom proudly defined themselves as voters for the right-
wing Likud and Tzomet parties, and who yet professed their
loathing of religious settlers of the Hebron area. Some of them
confided to him that "they terminated their service with hard
feelings, not about the Arabs but about the settlers. The unit's
officers circulated among the soldiers a petition, intended to be
submitted to the Defense Ministry. The petition deplored the
hostile attitude toward them by the very settlers they were
ordered to protect". The article appeared shortly after a Hamas
guerilla assault resulted in killing a religious settler, Ephraim
Ayubi, who worked as the driver of Rabbi Druckman, one of the
most extremist Gush Emunim leaders. This is why Gurevitz is
careful to point out at the beginning of his article that
"according to the unanimous view of the unit's officers, duly
reported to the area's commanders, the murder of Ephraim Ayubi
was a retaliation for the settlers' rampages, in the course of
which the settlers burned 15 Arab-owned cars in a single day.
That arson, not reported in the Israeli media at all", (except
for a very short and hard-to-find note in "Haaretz") "took place
one day before the murder. Right after this arson, the soldiers
were told by their higher-ups to `expect an Arab retaliation'".
Although the most publicized (especially by the U.S. press)
exploits of settler terrorism do follow acts of violence of
Palestinian guerilla units, their retaliatory character is in
doubt. As in Ayubi's case, they may provoke the Palestinian to
retaliate. This is acknowledged by the internal communications of
the Israeli army which often admit that a given action of
Palestinian guerillas was "a retaliation". But in Israeli (let
alone the U.S.) propaganda Palestinian violence is invariably
described as "unprovoked" by anything which the settlers or the
Israeli government may have done.
Gurevitz quotes "a unit officer: `When we had to intervene in a
skirmish between the Arabs and the settlers, I felt more secure
when my back was turned to the Arabs than to the settlers'. The
unit's officers and soldiers have serious grievances, both about
the nature of their assignments and about the attitudes of the
Jews toward them... About the Jews living in Hebron they say:
`Their behavior towards the Arabs is intentionally provocative.
They consciously sabotaged our work. For example, they always
knew in advance which Hamas members we sought to arrest, but they
obstructed our searches so that we would fail to capture the
hard-core terrorists. They are interested in keeping tension in
the area, so as to prevent the emergence of any reconciliatory
mood. The settlers have a vested interest in perpetuating unrest,
in order to thus prove that despite the peace process, in Hebron
there is no order. We got the impression that they were ready to
die for that purpose. In their eyes, their own death would be a
martyrdom for the cause of sabotaging the political process'. The
soldiers testify that the settlers often harass Hebron Arabs in
front of the Israeli army troops. They overturn the crates in the
market, kick the elderly Arabs carrying the baskets, spit at
people, spray insecticides on fruits and vegetables, overturn the
carts loaded with tomatoes so as to crush them underfoot.
Particularly shocking for the soldiers was an incident in which
the settlers screamed `Mazal Tov!' [`Congratulations!' in Hebrew] at an
Arab family burying their child in front of an army equipment camp
near Beit Hadassah.
"But as the unit's officers and soldiers testify, the attitude
of the settlers toward the Israeli army soldiers was no less
scandalous. Even those soldiers who had had feelings of sympathy
for the Jewish settlers when they began to serve, were saying
`this is what bothers us most'. I know that this view is shared
by the commanders of a reserve unit which preceded our
paratrooper unit in serving on the spot. It is also shared by
many soldiers with whom I spoke, including the steadfast voters
for [the right-wing] Likud and Tsomet parties. All of them
stressed how shocked they were by the settlers' attitude toward
both the Arabs and the Israeli army, and by their attempts to
disrupt the army's routines. No wonder the soldiers began to ask
themselves on whose side the settlers were, and whom the army was
protecting. All the events desribed here have been reported to
the area's permanent military commanders, including the commander
of the `Hebron brigade' of the Israeli army, Colonel K".
One of the unit's major assignments in Hebron was the guarding
of the Patriarchs' Cave, a prayer site for both the religious
settlers and the Muslims. "B. R., a unit's soldier who in the
last elections voted for Tzomet recounts: `Most of us served in
this area for the first time. We came without prejudice... In the
Patriarchs' Cave, administered by the Islamic Waqf, the settlers
keep trying hard to disrupt the officially imposed status quo
between the Jews and the Arabs. For example, they enter the
Jacob's Hall before the 40 minutes of [officially imposed] break
between the Jewish and Moslem prayers are up. They are bringing
food there, which is against the regulations. Some of those who
guard the Patriarchs' Cave are religious `Hesder Yeshiva'
soldiers. But even they report how the settler children keep
spraying acid and scattering thumb-tacks on the carpets of that
Hall. The Muslims now have no choice but to collect the
thumb-tacks with a magnet before beginning to pray".
Another soldier Y.R., aged 26, who had voted for Tzomet in the
last elections, graphically described what he felt when
Palestinian children were beaten up by the settlers in his
presence: "Two weeks ago an Arab child carrying a Palestinian
flag passed me by. A Jewish woman who saw him assailed him, beat
him up, and snatched the flag from him while yelling at me:
'Soldier, come help!' Knowing that flag displays were already
permitted, I answered that there was nothing to do, since the
little boy had not committed any crime. She nevertheless kept
beating him. Suddenly I found myself in the role of a
kindergarten teacher, forced to intervene against Jewish woman
molesting a little Arab boy. Theoretically I could have told the
boy to get out of there, because it is always easier to deal with
an Arab than with a Jew. But in spite of my political views, I
found it hard to do so and thus act against the government's
orders".
Let me omit other disturbing facts in Gurevitz's description,
in order to concentrate on what is crucial in his article: namely
on the reasons for which the soldiers cannot call the religious
settlers to order. These reasons are not often discussed by
Hebrew papers now supporting Rabin. But Gurevitz was told by a
unit's officer that "the soldiers are forbidden to arrest a Jew,
except if he hits a soldier, or injures an Arab by shooting in
the presence of an Israeli army soldier". Beating the Arabs, or
humiliating them otherwise, or vandalizing their property before
the very eyes of the army soldiers is not regarded as "a
sufficient reason" for arresting a settler. Let me add that no
Jew can be arrested if he does the same. A rule to this effect
has remained in force since many years, but has never been
announced in public. It is explicitly communicated only to
high-ranking officers. Gurevitz quotes "another officer, T. who
complained that he had never received adequate explanations from
the permanent commanders of the area what is the standard
procedure by which the Jews are never arrested... An Arab is sent
to jail the minute he is seen to throw a stone. But the settlers
throw stones with impunity, or else they send girls or women to
throw stones or to overturn peddlars' carts in the market,
because they know that according to army regulations we are
forbidden to have physical contact with Jewish women, so we can
do nothing against them... Another of the settlrs' tricks is to
pretend to play football: the real purpose of the supposed game
being to smash windows in Arab houses or street lamps".
That story by Gurevitz is by no means an isolated instance
which happened to be published by the Hebrew press. Tzvi Gilat
("Yediot Ahronot", 9 November) found himself at 5:30 a.m. near
the religious settlement of Ma'aleh Levona, when he had "to brake
his car in front of a barbed wire fence spread out across the
highway. It was still too dark to see the fence shortly before
the sunrise, but several skull-capped youths suddenly appeared
peeking in to find out whether we were Jews. They were quite
high-spirited. `What is going on here? A local initiative?'
`Something of the sort', they answered. `Just look over there,
where our boys are burning tires, near Shilo junction. An Arab,
seeing the roadblock, will turn around and fall into our ambush'.
Several minutes later a small convoy of Arab cars indeed drove
towards the roadblock... An unfortunate driver was caught. He was
standing beside his car, with its doors open. The reserve tire
was flung on the road. Two settlers - one brandishing a pistol in
the air, the other aiming an Uzi submachine gun at him told him
to go away. The Arab started crying. He realized that his vehicle
was about to be burned. `Don't cry', the man with Uzi said - the
barrel ten centimeters from the driver's chin - `our people have
been crying already enough'. `I have ten children", the Arab
begged to spare the source of his livelihood. He took out his ID
card to prove that he was telling the truth. `We are not welfare
services', the religious settler replied callously. I asked them
what they intended to do with the car. It took them a minute to
decide. `We'll give it back to him provided he walks home'. Then,
as a gesture of good will, they let him take his cigarettes from
the car and watch his empty vehicle from a safe distance. Without
the media on the spot, they would probably have acted
differently". Gilat adds that soldiers were not far away from the
scene of the incident.
Hanna Kim ("Hadashot", November 9) inspected a roadblock set up
by religious settlers from the settlement of Yaqir, where "a
local hero, Yehuda, nicknamed by his neighbors `Crazy Yehuda'
revelled in all his glory. `Do you want to watch how an Arab gets
burned alive? Just point your camera at me', he boasted to the
reporters.... A bus of Arab workers arrived and Crazy Yehuda
yelled that he would not let it pass through. He screamed at the
(Jewish) driver: `You little parasite, take your Arabs back. Get
me some fire, so that I can burn you all", he shouted, and got on
the bus. The stunned Arab passengers stared at him in silence.
Two chums of Yehuda took him away from the bus, one of them
telling him to `shut up'. Two conscript soldiers, one of them a
lieutenant, and two reservists without indication of rank, were
watching it unruffled. `Because of them, I was waken up at 2:00
a.m.', one of the reservists explained. `Isn't it enough that I
have 23 days more to serve in the West Bank, in Tulkarm? Do I
need to do this as well?' The term `to do' was inappropriate as
the reservist remained seated throughout".
At a moment of quiet the religious settlers talked to Kim.
Crazy Yehuda told her that "they should be exterminated just as
we [the Israelites] had exterminated the Amalekites. [See Samuel
I, Chapter 15.) Not only the males, but entire families, and
their descendants no matter how remote. You just have to seek out
all the descendants'. His buddy, Meir, who was holding an Israeli
flag, upbraided the Israeli media for wanting to be on the spot
in order to document his deeds. `Hitler owed his successes to
Goebbels. You are doing the same'".
Like other correspondents, Kim recorded the numerous instances
of religious settlers mistaking secular Jews for Arabs. "A taxi
with an Israeli license plate somehow got the settlers excited.
`Let me pass through, or I'll punch your face,' yelled the Jewish
driver at Meir, demanding to see the former's ID card. A dilemma.
What is to be done with a vehicle whose Jewish passengers are
dark-skinned and look like Arabs?" On the spot of another
roadblock Kim witnessed "a near fistfight between a Jewish
secular settler with dark skin and black hair, a taxi driver from
Ariel, and a religious settler who suspected that the secular
settler was an Arab and demanded to see his ID card. The secular
settler was furious. `How do you dare suspect me of being an
Arab?' `You behave like the Arabs do' the religious settler
shouted back. The driver blushed, the arteries on his neck
looking like ready to burst. He clenched his fists, waving them
at the religious settler, until his pals forced him to step
away".
But Kim also witnessed the "Oriental-looking Jews" who
sympathized with the religious settlers to the point of
encouraging them when stopped. "`Good for you,' one of them said.
`A Jewish intifada, that's what we now need'. After the car drove
away one religious settler muttered: 'The passenger on the back
seat looked to me like an Arab'. But a pal of his comforted him:
`That's not so bad if only one slipped through'".
Hillel Cohen ("Kol Ha'ir", November 12) reports how in Hebron
a group of settlers went to the Patriarchs' Cave cave for
Sabbath prayers. On their way there the settlers damaged 14 cars
belonging to Arab residents of the neighborhood. They smashed
their windows or punctured their tires, and then proceeded on to
the Cave, where they greeted the arrival of the Sabbath by
singing melodious songs... On Sunday, after a settler was killed
by Hamas guerillas, "Hebron was announced a military zone closed
to the media. A curfew was imposed on the city's Palestinian
residents. The army had good reason to deny the media access to
the place, because evidence of the settlers' rampage was
plentiful. Many huses and dozens of cars parked on the city's
major streets had windows broken. It was an ideal testimony of
the army's impotence vis-a-vis the settlers". Cohen comments that
"breaking the windows of an Arab car is in Hebron an everyday
occurrence which already long ago stopped attracting any
attention". After the army did not let Cohen enter Hebron, he
simply, together with his photographer, boarded the religious
settlers' bus in Jerusalem. In this way he could enter the city
undisturbed. "On the way, the religious youths from Kiryat Arba
kept themselves busy slinging stones at Arab passersby, while
summarily explaining their behavior by saying: `we are the
settlers, aren't we?' At the entrance to Kiryat Arba old grafitti
`Only a sucker doesn't kill an Arab' was still visible".
Like any Jew, settler or visitor alike, Cohen could walk freely
through "the city of Hebron even under curfew, when its streets
were deserted" with none of its Arab inhabitants in sight. He
noticed "evidence of the settlers' rampages from previous days"
everywhere: shattered windows, overturned cars and traces of
arson. Grafitti in Hebrew, noticed by other reporters, like
Gideon Levy ("Haaretz Supplement", November 26) were in full
view. Religious settlers threatened the locals with dire
consequences if they dare wipe out those grafitti. According to
Levy, the most frequent among them was the beginning of verse 7
of Psalm 149: "To execute vengeance upon the Gentiles"; whereas
the next in frequency was "Death to the Arabs". Apartheid
manifests itself in the Territories also in that the Israeli army
orders the local Palestinians to wipe out any grafitti in Arabic,
even those which express longing for peace; but grafitti in
Hebrew spraypainted by the settlers are left untouched,
regardless of their content. This racist practice has long
standing. The highway from Jerusalem to the "Military
Headquarters of Judea and Samaria" in Beit-El passes through a
bridge, and on that bridge a grafitti in Hebrew "To make
mincemeat of the Arabs" was spraypainted as long ago as 1986. The
officers serving in those Headquarters and the officials of both
Military and Civil Administrations which have their offices in
the same compound see it everyday. But it is still there, even
after the Oslo Agreement.
As a digression, it would be instructive to quote here verses
5-9 of Psalm 149 which is part of the Jewish Morning prayer,
which is often chanted by religious settlers, and which for Gush
Emunim serves as their virtual battle cry. The verses are: "Let
the saints be joyful in glory, let them sing aloud upon their
beds. Let the praises of the Lord be in their mouth and a
two-edged sword in their hand. To execute vengeance upon the
Gentiles and punishments upon the nations. To bind their kings
with chains and their nobles with fetters of iron. To execute
upon them the judgement which is written; this honor have all His
saints. Halleluyah!" The preference of pogromist religious
settlers for such bloodthirsty Biblical passages is self
explanatory. (Incidentally, the same passages exercised similar
influence on the more extreme among the Calvinists in the XVI and
XVII centuries.) But unfortunately, this linkage between the
Bible and political violence is hardly ever spoken about.
But let me return to Cohen's report. "The car of M., from the
Zaloum family (he preferred that his first name remains unknown,
"not out of fear, but as a precaution"), stands without tires not
far from the Cave. It was damaged before the assaults and the
curfew. Zaloum: `When Friday prayers were over, I left the Cave
and went to a street where my car was parked. I found all four
tires flat and all windows broken. Suddenly I heard something. I
looked around and saw a neighbor of mine sitting with a baby in
another car with a broken window. Her arm was bleeding.
Forgetting my car, I approached to find out what I could do.
Eventually she was taken to the hospital'. He said that during
recent months, the settlers have gone on this street on rampage
almost every Friday, always smashing the cars. His own car has
been smashed four times already; and he now wants to sell it,
even at half its price. `My problem is that I can't repair it any
more. Due to all that damage wrought, there is a shortage of
glass in Hebron. And tires are also difficult to find'".
Cohen also visited the victims of what he calls "an avenging
raid". A convoy of vehicles filled by religious settlers from
localities north of Jerusalem raided Arab villages and refugee
camps "two weeks ago. They broke windows in many houses and set
all cars they could find on fire... One of their targets was the
house of Hussein Bakir in Bir Zeit. His wife, Siham, was then at
home, and she recounts: `I was sitting at home with my one year
old baby, Basil, watching TV. I suddenly heard hard knocking at
the outer gate. I went out to the balcony and saw many cars in
front of the house. Several men threw stones. I was very scared
about Basil. I left through the back door and went to the
neighbors'... The settlers later returned assembling in front of
Bakir's house. `I was seeing from the second floor window in the
neighbor's house how my house was burning. I saw the smoke coming
forth from there. I started screaming'. Other members of the
family called the firemen, but the settlers halted the approach
of their engine and even punctured its water hoses... Bakir's
family points an accusing finger at the army, which stood aloof
throughout, doing nothing. Dr. Rashid Bakir, a surgeon at the
Ramallah government hospital, said that an officer standing near
the burning house had photographed the fire, without trying to
prevent the arson. The family saw him, later, but he denied
having been present at the scene". This was by no means the only
act of vandalism which the religious settlers committed in Bir
Zeit under the army's eyes. The elections to the Students Union
at the Bir Zeit University resulting in the first ever defeat of
a list supported by Yasser Arafat which took place shortly after
this spree of vandalism can be seen as its consequence. But to
the best of my knowledge, no Israeli (or Western) "expert" has
connected these two events. Yet in my view at least, the
connection is obvious.
The last story is by Nahum Barnea ("Yediot Ahronot", November
26) concerning Muhammad Lutfi Darwish al-Ra'ouf al-Zaru and his
pregnant wife Rima. Al-Zaru was driving his car on the way to his
sister. Due to the beating, Rima al-Zaru miscarried her twin yet
unborn children. Barnea stresses that {}al-Zaru had in his
youthtime worked for ten years in factories owned by Jews and
then learned to speak fluent Hebrew. Here is Barnea's story in
all its detail.
Al-Zaru, 33, now supports himself by driving Palestinian
workers to work in a rented Peugeot 504 car. On November 6, at
9:40 a.m., he was with his wife driving his car on a highway to
the east of Hebron. Their destination was the home of his sister.
The assault on him was thus described to Barnea in his own words:
"A group of religious settlers were walking on the road linking
Kiryat Arba with the neighboring settlement of Giv'at Ha'Harsina.
One of them, a large, bearded man wearing a prayer shawl,
signalled by hand the car to stop. `I shifted the gear and
stopped the car slowly. Without saying a word, he knocked me in
the eye. I saw red. I moved over to the other seat, but he kept
hitting me. I got infuriated. I said: "Damn you, what did I do to
you?" He put the barrel of his M-16 [gun] against my chest and
cocked it. My wife grabbed the barrel so as to shift it aside.
"What did he do to you?" she shouted at him in Arabic. He twisted
her arm, with the effect of pulling her abdomen forward, toward
the back of the seat, and then he abruptly pushed her back. She
screamed and cried. When I saw my wife getting hit, I said to
myself that my life didn't matter. If I die, so be it. I opened
the door of the car in order to grab him. But other settlers came
to his help and started beating me. My wife said that they were
three or four, one of them a woman, but I saw no one else but
him. They felled me onto the ground. To protect myself, I curled
myself up. They kicked me, stirring me over. I touched my eye and
found it was bleeding. I wanted to grab a stone. But, aiming his
gun at my head, he said: "get up". Then he said: "get into your
car and get lost". I drove some distance down the highway,
towards Jerusalem. I noticed an army jeep. I signalled to them
with my lights. They stopped, coming out of the jeep with their
guns drawn. They relaxed only when they saw my face gory. I asked
them to "drive with me to catch the settlers". "We can't", they
answered, "we are on an assignement. Drive the other way, toward
the roadblock. They will help you"'.
`On Saturdays the army sets up roadblocks between Kiryat Arba
and Hebron, to protect the religious settlers on their way to
pray in the Patriarchs' Cave. I drove there to tell the soldiers
everything. "Never mind", a soldier said. "Go to the hospital for
treatment, and then come back and wait with us until the settlers
return from the prayers. We will catch the fellow, don't worry".
I parted with my wife, leaving her with her father. I received
first aid and returned to the roadblock. The soldier made a
phonecall and a jeep arrived from the Civil Administration. "I
will take care of it" said the man from the Civil Administration.
I told him: "everyone keeps telling me, don't worry, I want to do
something, but no one is doing anything". He laughed. "If you
wait for the soldiers to do something", he said, "then you can
forget it". He turned on a communication set. "I spoke to the
military governor himself", he said. "He instructed me to make
you stay here until the settler returns. You will identify him,
and we will take care of him".
`At 12:30 the settlers returned. I approached a soldier and
said: "There he is". "Sit where you are and say nothing", the
soldier answered. He went over to him and said: "Give me your
name, you beat up this man". The settler just kept going, as if
he didn't hear a word. When the soldier asked his name for the
second time, the settler said: "Who are you to demand that I
identify myself?" And he kept walking on, without stopping...
The roadblock officer came over. The soldiers told him what
happened. I was told by the officer to "get into the jeep". We
pursued the settler up to the entrance to Kiryat Arba. I pointed
him out. The officer told him: "Give me your particulars". "Are
you crazy?", yelled the settler. "Do you bring an Arab to arrest
me, a Jew, on the ground of what he says? We refuse to answer any
questions until you hand the Arab over to us. We need him". "The
Arab is in my custody", answered the officer. And he went over to
his driver telling him in a soft voice: "Take the Arab at once
back to the roadblock". He told the settlers: "Move 20 meters
away, then I will hand him over to you". When the settlers did
so, the soldiers ignited the car and just fled. I remained at the
roadblock. Ten minutes later some military vehicles arrived. I
asked the soldiers what happened. "Can't you see?" a soldier
said, "a real war is going on over you"'".
Let me add that in another inicident on Saturday, December 4, a
Border Guard who happened to be a Druze called upon a religious
settler of Hebron to identify himself. The latter answered: "a
Jew who identifies himself to a Gentile on Sabbath, desecrates
Sabbath and commits a religious sin". The Border Guard didn't
insist. The incident was reported by the Police minister, Shahal,
at the next day's government meeting. Some junior ministers
denounced that religious settler as a "racist" ("Haaretz" and
other Hebrew papers, December 5). Rabin and the two senior
ministers, Peres and Shohat (Finance), however, refrained from
making any comment. And the government didn't issue any
instructions to the effect that settlers refusing to identify
themselves, on Sabbath or at any other time, were to be detained,
charged and brought to the court.
Two days after the assault on al-Zaru and his wife she had to
be hospitalized for the sake of aborting the fetuses from her
uterus. "At the time my wife was in the hospital", recounts
Al-Zaru, "I kept going every morning to the police station in
order to file a complaint. But the policemen refused to let me
in. I went to a Civil Administration officer whose name was
Tomer. `We are very sorry,' Tomer said, `but we can do nothing to
help you'. Then a policeman, investigating another case, came to
the hospital. I told him my story. He took me to the police
station. There was an officer there by the name of Golan. I said:
`I will take your name down.' `No need', he said, `if you forget,
just recall the Golani brigade, and you will recollect it'. He
tried to sound funny. `Why do you worry?' he asked. `Make a new
baby. You Arabs are fast at it'. But he refused to accept my
complaint, and he also refused to go to the hospital and take a
statement from my wife. `Let her come to the police', he said. He
hugged me as if I were his friend, and then he pushed me out of
the police station". And that was the end of the affair. Barnea's
efforts to press the army to investigate the case were also
fruitless. He contacted the religious settlers of Hebron to find
out whether any of them recall the incident and got an
interesting response from "Baruch Marzel, a "Kach" leader", who
told him that "he remembered that Saturday because after the
Arabs threw stones at the Jews, the latter retaliated by damaging
30 Arab cars. But", added Marzel, "none of us would remember a
case of an Arab whom a Jew merely punched, because this happens
every day".
The incidents described here, including the one reported by the
entire Hebrew press, cannot be considered isolated instances.
They clearly follow a recurrent pattern. Day after day
Palestinians are being beaten up or humiliated otherwise, or
their property is vanadalized. Such incidents happen wherever
religious settlers show up, and they recently do show up all over
the West Bank, even if only in few Gaza Strip spots. Since mid-
September the conditions of everyday life of the Palestinians
vividly resemble the conditions the Jews lived under in viciously
anti-Semitic countries, or the American Blacks during the heyday
of the Ku-Klux-Klan in the South. The only difference is that the
world media don't pay to Jewish religious settlers even that
amount of attention they would pay to much milder manifestations
of anti-Semitism. Although Kiryat Arba is the largest religious
settlement in the Territories, similar offenses are being
committed, even if at somewhat lower a scale, wherever the
religious settlers are present. The Hebrew press speaks about it,
even if not always as informatively as the columnists quoted
above. Since the signing of the Agreement between Israel and the
PLO, the number of Palestinians beaten up or humiliated by the
religious settlers, quite often under the eyes of Israeli
soldiers who were unable or refused to intervene, must already be
very large. As for the "experts" dealing with the current
situation of the Palestinians and their responses, most of them
have studiously ignored their oppression by the religious
settlers in their "expertises".
The Israeli government is certainly well-informed about the
atrocities which it condones and supports. By that I don't even
mean the financial and the strategic expressions of that
encouragement which were discussed in Report 129. What I mean is
the behavior of the army which remains supportive of the
religious settlers even in rare instances when orders are given
to detain some of them so as to impress the media. To
substantiate this point, let me quote an earlier article by Amit
Gurevitz ("Ha'olam Ha'ze", November 3) which vividly describes a
typically tolerant behavior of the army towards the religious
settlers. Gurevitz defines it as "let them do as they please"
attitude, which is manifest even in cases of token "detention" of
some settlers. The particular incident described by Gurevitz
occurred near Ramallah. The religious settlers laid siege to a
house of a Palestinian family named Hasunni. For over one hour,
"they pelted stones and heavy cement blocks at the house, under
the very eyes of a unit of soldiers and of the commander of
Israeli Police for the Judea District, Moshe Mizrahi, who in the
process told this correspondent that `any stone throwing is a
crime and thereby a sufficient reason to detain any settler
committing it'. In fact, only three besiegers were detained. They
were ordered to get into a police car and at once let out through
the car's other door. The three were `detained' only after they
were observed to proceed from stone throwing to arson. Others
were at the same time told that they had an opportunity `to
relieve their feelings' which they did wholeheartedly. Upon
entering the house, I found the entire Hasunni family lying on
the floor of their upper storey, in absolute darkness, while from
the outside the settlers applauded and whistled in joy whenever
glass was broken or a stone did not miss its mark. During all
that time, dozens of Israeli army soldiers, policemen and Border
Guards were walking around, mixing with the crowds of religious
settlers. Nothing could escape their attention. A commander of
the battalion of soldiers on the scene, and an officer in the
rank of a colonel were present, serenely listening to two
teenagers bickering over who was better at stone throwing. When
the teenagers realized I was a journalist, they showed me their
ID cards, proudly requesting to have their names published. Here
they are: Yaron Ben-Yitzhak and Shimon Re'uveni".
A minority of religious settlers belonging to various splinters
of Kahane ("Kach") movement are in a class in itself. They are
supposed to be more extremist than the remaining religious
settlers. In my judgement, however, the difference lies in their
being more brazen in professing their real views rather than in
their deeds. All the bickering between the splinters
notwithstanding, for the purpose of assaulting the Palestinians
most of "Kach" progeny in the Territories are organizationally
united in the so-called Committee for Safety on Highways, an
organization which began its career already in January 1988. The
Committee and its leaders have been openly admitting their
involvement in assaults on the Arabs and their property for
almost six years already, during which the Israeli government has
done nothing to stop them. The last time they did it in an
interview granted "by a veteran member of the Committee, who
requested to remain anonymous", in which "he spoke about the
Committee's character and activities" to "Haaretz" correspondent
Nadav Shraga'i (November 23). Of concern to this report, however,
is the fact that this Committee takes full advantage of the rules
restricting the options the Israeli army is left with in dealing
with the Jews, as Gurevitz described them (November 17).
Presumably as a quid pro quo for their tallying with the rules,
"the Committee members could have carried out hundreds of
actions, but the Israeli army, police, security forces [i.e. the
Shabak] and the judiciary have hardly ever responded". (The quote
is from Shraga'i.)
The openness with which the Committee professes its aims and
acts accordingly is truly remarkable. Says the "veteran member":
"After Ayubi's murder we used our loudspeakers in the streets of
Kiryat Arba to call upon the Committee activists to assemble at
the southern gate. About 60 people came in about 15 cars. We
planned in advance. We divided ourselves into groups. Each group
was assigned an area. We were equipped with our personal weapons,
crowbars to fracture doors, iron rods, plenty of stones and many
gallons of gasoline". None of this could have been done except
under the very noses of the Israeli army. "Our method was simple,
and already proven effective. We drive with searchlights lit so
as to blind the Arab drivers approaching us. The driver gets
confused and slows down. This gives us two options: he either
gets into an accident, or waits until we pass him by. In the
latter case we throw a large stone at his windshield. The stone
may hit him or cause an accident. Last week we were helped by
dense fog over the Hebron area. The blinding lights and the
stones had quite potent an effect on the Arab drivers. At Beit
Kakhil junction alone we precipitated six accidents I know of.
One Arab vehicle crashed into a police car. In some accidents the
Arabs were wounded".
Shraga'i then asked: "Have firearms been used?" The veteran
answered: "As a rule they aren't. We use knives to puncture the
tires. Usually, we try to puncture two tires of each car so as to
make the reserve tire useless. The crowbars are used to break the
door locks. The Arabs recently learned to protect their water
heaters on the roofs from all sides by iron bars, but crowbars
are the answer to that. Stones are thrown at house and car
windows. In the summer we also set fire to every pile of hay we
see and spray insecticides on vineyards of the Halhoul area.
After the Ayubi murder we uprooted two dunums of Arab-owned
grapevines near the site of the murder and set fire to 15 Arab
cars. We arrived at an Arab building site near Hebron. We
vandalized it as much as we could. There was a huge crane there.
In the foreseeable future that crane won't work". Question: "What
happens to those who defy you?" The veteran's answer: "We
concentrate on damaging property. If there are locals who dare
defy us, they get beaten badly. This happened at the Hebron
market, where we follow a standard retaliatory procedure. The
procedure is to overturn as many market carts as possible.
Several Arab peddlars were cheeky enough to put resistance. They
got beaten exactly as they deserved".
Such atrocities are perpetrated not only in Hebron and the
adjoining area. The veteran informs that the Committeee "is
active not only in the Hebron area, but also in Ariel, Yitzhar,
Beit-El, Shilo and in [the Haredi town of] Immanuel. We have a
handful of members in almost every one of the 140 settlements [of
the West Bank]. 3 or 4 people are enough to carry out simple
unsophisticated operations. For that we don't need more people.
Such minimal manpower is always available to us". To all
appearances this is true. The veteran also provides the already
well-known information about the Committee's members such as
"Baruch Marzel, the first chairman of the Committee for Safety on
Highways who is now a member of the Kiryat Arba [Municipal]
Council, which proves something. And we also have our
representatives coordinating work in the Local Action Committee,
which is the Council's informal vigilante outfit for retaliations
against the terrorists". The same is in my view the case in all
religious settlements, but not in the secular ones, because all
major Israeli secular parties abhor "Kach", Likud even more than
Labor.
An example of the Committee's performance which occurred far
away from Hebron was reported by "Haaretz" on November 21. The
mentioned Baruch Marzel together with another well-known "Kach"
militant, Noam Federman, were detained a day before for having
gone on rampage during the visit of the President of Israel Ezer
Weizman to Kiryat Arba. Weizman's intention was to encourage the
settlers, but Marzel and Federman nevertheless abused him
violently. When they were brought before the magistrate in
Western Jerusalem (as settlers they have the privilege of
standing trials in Israel), the police asked to remand them on
the ground that "they could not be found while being pursued
since November 4 for an offense they were suspected of committing
on that day". Let me parenthetically comment that at the time the
two "could not be found" they were engaged in public activities.
The police told the magistrate, Yehudit Tzur, that it suspects
Marzel and Federman of "arriving in a rented taxi in the Arab
village of Al-Hadar in the district of Bethlehem, in the company
of some armed settlers. Upon arriving there, they went to a local
grocery. One of them aimed his gun at the grocer, while others
burned the Palestinian flags on sale". Thereupon, the whole group
criss-crossed the village, burning all the flags that could be
found, and forcing the inhabitants to watch the fires under
threats of shooting and actually shooting into the air. According
to my sources, incidents of this type are quite common in many
West Bank villages, even if they don't occur in the Gaza Strip.
The assaulters are hardly ever apprehended and the Israeli army
dismisses the compaints of the villagers with contempt. In this
particular case, however, the assaulters were watched from a
nearby Israeli army look-out and telescopically photographed,
presumably by soldiers uninformed of what the army really wanted.
The photographs, which were clear enough to identify the
assaulters, were handed over to the police. The latter, which
then had Marzel and Federman under detention for insulting the
President, asked for their remand for 7 days more. The sequel of
the story is instructive. Marzel and Federman wanted to be freed
on bail in view of the "petty" nature of offenses they were
charged with. Marzel argued that "charging him with so petty
offenses proves that the police is biased against him". Accepting
such "arguments", Ms. Tzur freed the two on a minuscule bail, in
addition to instructing Marzel that he spends the next 4 days in
Jerusalem in some place where he could be located by the police.
Such kindness toward the "Kach" members and other religious
settlers is typical: if not of all Jewish judges of Jerusalem
then of a large majority of them. Their leniency is so well-known
that in the rare cases when the Israeli police or the Attorney
General Office really want to prosecute some "Kach" members from
the Territories, they assign them to magistrates and judges in
other Israeli cities, which is perfectly legal.
Here is another example of leniency of the judiciary toward
"Kach", from 1989. At that time, "Kach" warned Jewish shopkeepers
of Jerusalem of dire consequences if they continue to employ Arab
helpers or errand boys. On one occasion, a "Kach" member entered
a grocery which employed an Arab, brandishing his pistol in the
midst of the crowd of customers. He aimed his pistol at the Arab
employee, told him to lie on the floor and stomped on him. When
the grocer protested, the Kahanist slapped his face. One customer
was shocked enough to quietly leave the store in order to call
the police. When the Kahanist was brought before the District
Judge, Tzvi Tal (now a candidate for the Supreme Court), the
facts were not in dispute, since the testimonies of the grocer
and his customers squared. The only "argument" the defendant had,
was that "his behavior had been dictated by his zealous concern
for the Jewish honor". The learned judge (religious, by the way)
accepted this "argument", to the point of lauding the defendant
in his verdict as "a worthy son to Abraham our father". The judge
sentenced the thug to no more than a brief suspended prison term,
and ordered the police to return to him forthwith his impounded
weapon. The pronouncedly sympathetic attitude of most religious
(Orthodox, if to use an American term) Israeli Jews toward "Kach"
and religious settlers is unaffected by whatever they may do to
the Gentiles, and it certainly is a factor owing to which both
"Kach" and other religious settlers thrive.
But above all else, "Kach" owes its good fortune to cooperation
of Israeli authorities, in particular to purposeful inaction of
the army and the police. Shraga'i asked "the veteran" whether the
army "tries to confiscate your weapons?" The answer was
revelatory: "There were some activists, and some people from
[Kiryat Arba] who were not our activists, whose weapons were
almost confiscated. But whoever really wants to retain his gun,
he can" (my emphasis). It can be conjectured that the only
difference between "Kach" and religious settlers is that the
former say it aloud "that there are no `innocent Arabs'" whereas
the latter only think so. "Last week Baruch Marzel, still the
movement's leader, said that all Arabs are PLO supporters, and
therefore none of them can be innocent".
The most important conclusion warranted by evidence presented
in this report is analogous to that of Report 129. I argued there
that Rabin's (and Clinton's) real policy is to support the
settlements in order to guarantee continuing Israeli domination
over the Territories under the cover of pretended concessions to
the Palestinians. To pursue that policy, Rabin needs to bestow
particular favors upon religious settlers, because they alone are
willing to settle in places like Netzarim, and even Hebron for
that matter. For the same reason Rabin must condone violence of
religious settlers against the Palestinians. Ruling a population
which refuses to accord to its rulers any legitimacy requires a
continuous recourse to violence, however limited in its scope,
for the purpose of cowing the people and keeping them
intimidated. This is exactly what the religious settlers are
doing, and this is also the reason why the Israeli army does
nothing to restrain them although it could restrain them easily.
The religious settlers (including "Kach" as long as it sticks to
the rules of the game) should be regarded as a vital segment of
the Israeli Security System, on a par with the army, the Shabak
and the police which are inhibited by the constraints of acting
as official arms of the Israeli government. It is therefore
delusory to expect that any segment of that Security System may
take any meaningful action against another.
Another conclusion to be reached from this report is that in
social and political terms, systematic violence such as described
here, even if purposefully limited, is much more important than
the murders (even of children!) or tortures inflicted only on
relatively few Palestinians. On the contrary, the present report
shows that, with the exception of the "wanted", the Israeli
Security System is not interested in having too many Palestinians
murdered or even wounded. It is interested in having them
continually harassed, humiliated and therefore in having them
feel vulnerable, as the serfs of a feudal lord had felt in the
Middle Ages.
By saying that I don't try to minimize the significance of
murder and torture. For years on end, I was doing my best to
struggle against the murders of Palestinians committed by the
State of Israel, and I was one of the first Israelis to openly
protest after 1967 against torture of Palestinians. I merely say
that socially and politically matters most what has the strongest
impact upon everyday life of the greatest numbers of people,
which in this case means upon everybody, at least potentially.
Such an impact cannot avoid to affect and ultimately to shape
people's consciousness, even though in modern times not
necessarily to the oppressors' liking. In the case under this
report's discussion, mass violence of the described kind will in
my view contribute to stepping up Palestinian resistance,
regardless of what the fate of the Agreement between Israel and
the PLO may be.