Israeli journos rescue Palestinian family

Jewish settlers are seen on a rooftop of a Palestinian house after setting fire to nearby trees during the evacuation of a disputed house in the West Bank city of Hebron, Thursday, Dec. 4 2008. Israeli security forces stormed a disputed house in the biblical city of Hebron on Thursday, dragging out some 250 settlers who barricaded themselves inside and hurled rocks, eggs and chemicals at their evictors. It was the first major West Bank evacuation since a violent 2006 confrontation that injured hundreds. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

As expected, Israeli settlers went on a rampage in Hebron last night after Israeli soldiers surprised activists and removed several hundred trying to prevent their government from clearing the house at the center of a legal dispute.

Using their confrontational Price Tag strategy, settlers attacked Palestinians with guns, rocks and arson.

The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem released footage (in the post below) showing settlers opening fire on Palestinians.

And, in one of the starkest moments documented by journalists, Israeli journalists intervened to protect a Palestinian family from Jewish rioters. 

It was a moment Haaretz journalist Avi Issacharoff bluntly called "a pogrom."

"This isn't a play on words or a double meaning,"  Issacharoff wrote. "It is a pogrom in the worst sense of the word."

"The brain requires a minute or two to digest what is taking place," he writes of going into the house and seeing the Palestinian family under attack. "Women and children crying bitterly, their faces giving off an expression of horror, sensing their imminent deaths, begging the journalists to save their lives. Stones land on the roof of the home, the windows and the doors. Flames engulf the southern entrance to the home. The front yard is littered with stones thrown by the masked men. The windows are shattered and the children are frightened. All around, as if they were watching a rock concert, are hundreds of Jewish witnesses, observing the events with great interest, even offering suggestions to the Jewish wayward youth as to the most effective way to harm the family. And the police are not to be seen. Nor is the army."

"I thought they were going to lynch those people," Issacharoff later told The Globe and Mail. "I couldn't just stand by.

"I can't believe that people - Israelis, Jews - can sink so low and do such things," he said.

Comments

[dr.moshe wisotsky]

the jewish terrorists settlers
should be thrown out of Israel.
they are criminals

[Edie]

Dr. Wisotsky - thrown out of Israel or thrown out of the Occupied Territories?

[Judy Liber]

When is enough going to be enough of the plague of viciousness wrought by the Israelis on the Palestinians???
As a Jew, I am sickened daily by the news that eminates from Israeli and American media. It's consistently pro-Israel, no matter WHAT they do--murder women, children, sick old men; uproot olive trees several hundred years old; demolish their meager houses while the families watch in agony (or sometimes with the residents still inside). They are being starved; they have no water; not even their ambulances or hospitals are safe; they can't get the most basic medicines or hospital supplies. They have created the Warsaw Ghetto all over again. But the Ghetto only went on a few years. This Israeli obscenity has gone on for two generations.
Then when a puny, insignificant pathetic attempt by some Palestinians actually succeeds in landing a small missile inside what shouldn't even BE "Israel," the Israelis lash out like Hiroshima victims, calling it an "attack" to which now Israel must respond with ferocity--of course NEVER acknowledging what the Israelis did to precipitate it. And god help a Jew who speaks out against the Israeli war crimes.

The Israelis and their supporters have had blood dripping from their hands for years and years. They dare to torment the Palestinians, while weeping and moaning and screaming about the "horror" of Iran perhaps creating a nuclear bomb. They never say word one about the fact that they possess enough nuclear weapons and powerful delivery systems to wipe out all of the Middle East.

When will the world stop being scared of being called "anti-semitic," or "nazi sympathizers?" For any Jew to stand by and let this go on, or worse, to joyously participate, makes THEM the Nazis. Of ALL people of the world, the JEWS should be the most empathetic to the suffering and unjust plight of the downtrodden.

Judy Liber

[Edie]

Judy,

There are MANY Jews from around the world and Israeli Jews as well that risk their lives going into the Occupied Territories to non-violently protest/resist human rights abuses and other illegal actions of the IDF.

Probably the best activist-based human rights organization that you might want to join is Amnesty International. The U.S. section website is www.aiusa.org.

There's also an organization, Jewish Voice for Peace that works for a peaceful resolution to this conflict. Their website it www.jvp.org. There are also other very effective and strong Jewish-American organizations that do speak out and say 'not in our name'. You might want to join them too. They don't get a lot of media attention, but they're there.