Israel/Palestine
Related: About this forumSurviving a Pogrom: Palestinian in Huwara Decries Israeli Settler Attack as "Ethnic Cleansing"
On Sunday, Israeli settlers ransacked and torched Palestinian homes in Huwara, near the occupied West Bank city of Nablus, killing at least one Palestinian resident and injuring dozens of others. The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem has accused Benjamin Netanyahu's government of backing a pogrom in Huwara. Israeli Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich said Wednesday that Huwara needs to be "wiped out" and that the state of Israel should do it. In response, 22 Israeli international law experts sent a letter to Israel's attorney general demanding an immediate investigation against Smotrich for potential war crimes. U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price also condemned Smotrich's comments, though he framed the conflict as bilateral by referencing the need to condemn Palestinian "incitement to violence." Meanwhile, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesperson for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, called on the U.S., as the Israeli government's most powerful international ally, to take action to stop its violence. For more on this latest escalation of the Israeli occupation, we're joined by Saddam Omar, a Huwara resident who witnessed the settler attacks, and Gideon Levy, an award-winning Israeli journalist and columnist for _Haaretz_.
Mosby
(17,458 posts)Uncle Joe
(60,138 posts)How can anyone speak of "crimes against humanity" when Israel's government is all but eliminating its' own Supreme Court?
I'm convinced the punitive apartheid policies against the Palestinian People in itself is undermining whatever claim Israel makes to being a democracy and their hard right government know it, so they drop the pretense just as the Republican Party has here in the U.S.
You can't have democracy for only one people.
Mosby
(17,458 posts)Some people are calling it a modern Kristallnacht, OK with that?
BTW it was the head of the IDF Central Command, Maj. Gen. Yehuda Fuchs who
made that comment , see :
https://www.timesofisrael.com/settler-extremists-sowing-terror-huwara-riot-was-a-pogrom-top-general-says/
Settler extremists are sowing terror, Huwara riot was a pogrom, top general says
Maj. Gen. Yehuda Fuchs, who oversees West Bank, also warns future clashes could end in Israeli fatalities; report says settler violence has doubled under new government
(snip)
What happened in Huwara was a pogrom carried out by law-breakers, Fuchs told Channel 12 news in an interview. We were not ready for a pogrom on the scale of dozens of people with flammable material and the means to set it on fire, heading to 20 or more places as well as confronting soldiers and commanders and police at the junction and setting random Palestinian homes and cars on fire.
We were not prepared for that many people, how they came, the scale, the force of the violence they used, and the planning they had carried out, he added.
Mosby
(17,458 posts)Israeli
(4,293 posts)a 73 year old grandmother with six grandchildren .
Maj. Gen. Yehuda Fuchs is the one you should be asking not me .
Mosby
(17,458 posts)Do you have any empathy for Israelis who might think differently than you?
Israeli
(4,293 posts)at the same time I can condemn attacks against innocent Palestinians
.....can you ?
Israeli
(4,293 posts)who said that Huwara needs to be "wiped out" , see :
https://www.timesofisrael.com/police-to-probe-far-right-mk-for-remarks-backing-violent-west-bank-settler-rampage/
Police to probe far-right MK for remarks backing violent West Bank settler rampage
Investigation comes after Otzma Yehudits Zvika Fogel said a closed, burnt Huwara thats what I want to see after deadly riot by extremists
Police on Wednesday looked set to launch an incitement investigation into coalition lawmaker Zvika Fogel for voicing support for rioters who earlier this week torched dozens of Palestinian vehicles as well as several homes in the northern West Bank.
Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara and State Prosecutor Amit Aisman cleared police to launch the investigation of Fogel, head of the Knessets National Security Committee.
The Otzma Yehudit MK, a former Israel Defense Forces brigadier general, gave his unambiguous backing on Monday to the extremist settlers, saying: A closed, burnt Huwara thats what I want to see.
Thats the only way to achieve deterrence. After a murder like yesterdays, we need burning villages when the IDF doesnt act, Fogel told Galey Israel Radio.
Hours after a Palestinian shooting terror attack that killed brothers Hallel Yaniv, 21, and Yagel Yaniv, 19, from the settlement of Har Bracha, hundreds of settlers ran riot through Huwara and other nearby towns, leaving one Palestinian dead and several others badly injured, in what a top general labeled a pogrom. Six more suspects were arrested overnight Tuesday in connection with the incident.
In a statement, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, chair of Otzma Yehudit, slammed the attorney general for allowing the police investigation, claiming there was one law for the right and one law for the left clear proof for the necessity of the [judicial] reform........