Settlers suspected of attacking sleeping Palestinian family

<snip>

"A group of settlers allegedly attacked a Palestinian family in an encampment south of Mount Hebron late Saturday and wounded two men, who are in light to moderate condition.

The West Bank encampment is located several hundred meters away from the illegal outpost Havat Yair, west of the Susia settlement.

The two wounded men are brothers Abed and Aziz Shaniran, aged 26 and 27. According to their relatives seven to ten settlers, some of them masked, arrived at the encampment at around midnight and used knives and sticks to attack the family members, who were asleep at the time."

<snip>

"The two brothers were taken in a military ambulance to a hospital in Hebron. The hospital said that one of the brothers was still anesthetized due to the serious blows he received to his head and face.

The family, who insists on staying in the area of Havat Yair despite the fact that its land has been expropriated, has been attacked several time over the past few months."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/698706.html

No matter the brand of the rigid fundamentalists -- they are nuts.

Nut cases here in the states will attack (non believers or gays or any other out group) if whipped up to a frenzy by their leaders.

Will the aggressors be charged with a crime?? Doubtful -- since the Government of Israel seems to be run by religious nut cases. Can you imagine the settlers gaining control of the Nukes???

It was there that Baruch Goldstein, a hero to many in the settler movement, killed dozens of people during religious services.

It is here also that Christian Peace Team members (and the late Tom Fox) courageously work for peace and intervene in the violence from Jewish settlers.
http://cpt.org/csd/campaign.php
More than a few CPT workers have been physically attacked.

<snip>

"Several Palestinians and an American volunteer in the West Bank yesterday filed complaints with the police, accusing settlers of violence toward Palestinians in the Hebron area on Saturday, after three people were wounded in two separate incidents.

In one of the incidents, Palestinians said about 10 masked, Hebrew-speaking youths had raided a tent encampment near the settlement of Sussia, on the border of the Havat Yair outpost on Saturday night. They allegedly attacked two Palestinian brothers with clubs and knives and then escaped. The brothers, Abdelrahman and Aziz Shanaran, were lightly to moderately wounded and were taken to Alia Hospital in Hebron for treatment."

<snip>

"In the second incident, which took place Saturday afternoon, an American volunteer assisting Palestinians in Hebron as part of the Tel Rumeida Project said he was attacked by a group of about 20 Israeli children and youths. He said they threw stones at him, kicked him and spat at him. He was taken to a Hebron hospital shortly after the incident and underwent additional tests at Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv yesterday. He was hit in the head and doctors are concerned he may have a concussion.

The volunteer said he ran from his assailants to a nearby Israel Defense Forces post, but charged that the soldiers on duty refused to assist him. However, IDF sources said the soldiers reached the site of the attack without being summoned and then dispersed the settlers. Police said they showed him mug shots but that the volunteer was unable to identify the people he said had attacked him."


http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/698819.html

Totally extreme and hatefilled people who have been terrorising the Palestinians of Hebron for a hell of a long time:

AMONG THE SETTLERS
by JEFFREY GOLDBERG

On a late winter’s day, a slight, blue-eyed boy rode a bicycle down an empty street in the militant Jewish ghetto of Hebron, in the West Bank. Clipped to the boy’s hair was a green kipa, crocheted and oversized in the style of the settlers. A damp wind was blowing, and a bank of clouds hovered over the city, but the boy was jacketless. Scattered piles of rubble and garbage, flecked with broken glass, lined the road.

The buildings along what the Jews call King David Street and the Arabs call Martyrdom Street are tightly packed and decaying. The Jews live mainly on the east side of the street, and the Arabs live to the west. When I visited, much of the area was under curfew. The Jewish zone, where some Arabs live, is “sterile,” a soldier told me: only Arabs who hold the proper pass are allowed to enter. The soldier, a paratrooper in the Israeli Army’s Fighting Pioneer Youth Brigade, was guarding Hadassah House, a three-story building where several families of settlers live. A brigade of soldiers, coils of razor wire, and hundreds of concrete barriers stand between Hebron’s fewer than eight hundred Jewish settlers and its hundred and fifty thousand Arab residents.

Across from Hadassah House is a school for Arab girls, called Córdoba, after the once-Muslim Spanish city. On one of its doors someone had drawn a blue Star of David. On another door a yellowing bumper sticker read, “Dr. Goldstein Cures the Ills of Israel.” The reference is to Baruch Goldstein, a physician from Brooklyn, who, in 1994, killed twenty-nine Muslims when they were praying in the Tomb of the Patriarchs, just down the road. Across the closed door of a Palestinian shop someone had written, in English, “Arabs Are Sand Niggers.”

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/040531fa_fact2_a

the state of israel needs to reign in its settlers like the palestinians need to stop their kassam rockets.

n/t

<snip>

"Palestinian and Israeli witnesses said Saturday that a group of settlers attacked Palestinian farmers near the West Bank city of Nablus on Friday, and that shots were fired in the area. The Israeli witnesses and a farmer representative filed a complaint at the Ariel police station.

According to Yoel Marshak, who heads the Kibbutz Movement's national mission department, five Israelis arrived Friday to assist farmers from Kfar Salim, adjacent to the settlement of Elon Moreh.

"At one point, the settlers appeared in front of the tractors and prevented their work. Others drove away the sheep in the area. They claimed that it was their land," Marshak said."

<snip>

"According to Marshak, "The Palestinian farmers turned away, but then 40 settlers from Skali Farm and Elon Moreh chased them. Ten of them were armed. They beat the Palestinians, and a brawl ensued. Suddently one of them fired two shots. I found one of the cartridges. The Israeli volunteers demanded that police arrest the perpetrators."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/701180.html

i have spent some time in nablus. Elon Moreh is a very hostile settlement block, one which israel plans to always keep.

if/when conflict arises it is the duty of the IDF to respond in the settlers favor... to arrest or intimidate and drive away palestinian farmers from working on their land and let the settlers have free reign of the area.

<snip>

"Beer Sheva District Court on Tuesday sentenced a settler to two years in prison for shooting a Palestinian civilian in the Gaza Strip last summer.

Daniel Finner, 39, a resident of the West Bank settlement of Tapuah, shot and wounded a Palestinian resident of El-Muasi in June 2005.

Finner opened fire during an altercation that erupted between Israeli guests of the Maoz Yam hotel in Gush Katif and Palestinian residents of the adjacent El-Muasi area.

Finner was at the hotel carrying out maintenance work on the hotel's electricity system. Palestinian residents of the Muasi were on the beach adjacent to the hotel. Upon Finner's arrival on the scene, several Israeli hotel guests began harassing one of the Palestinians, and beat him to a point where he needed medical attention. Israelis and Palestinians then began throwing stones at each other.

According to the charges, Finner burst onto the scene with a loaded Uzi submachine gun and began firing in the air and directly at the Palestinians. One Palestinian man was severely wounded by the gunfire and was rushed to a hospital to be operated upon."

more

<snip>

"An elderly Palestinian, who was allegedly beaten up by settlers while farming his land in the West Bank on Saturday, is being treated for serious injuries at Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva.

Saber Shtiyeh, 73, of the West bank village of Salem, was attacked and beaten up by four settlers while working in the field, farmers working nearby told Shtiyeh's family. The farmers said they had seen settlers, near the Elon Moreh settlement, approach Shtiyeh and had then heard him shout and yell.

Shtiyeh was hospitalized with six skull fractures, three broken vertebrae in his neck, four broken ribs, a perforated lung and fractures in his arm and leg. He is on a respirator.

Israeli volunteers have been helping to ward off settlers' attacks to enable Salem's farmers to work their land. The volunteers include Yoel Marshak, head of the United Kibbutz Movement's Special Assignments Division and David Nir, a member of Rabbis For Human Rights."


more