Settlers burn Palestinian home while army uproots trees in Hebron

IMEMC, Jan 15, 2008


This article was originally published by the IMEMC and is republished with permission.

A group of radical armed Israeli settlers attacked a Palestinian house and set fire to it while the Israeli army kidnapped the owners of the house on Tuesday midday in the southern West Bank city of Hebron.

Palestinian sources reported that a group of settlers from Beit Hadasa located in the central part of Hebron attacked the nearby Palestinian home and set fire to it. When the owners of the house along with their neighbors tried to put out the fire Israeli troops attacked them, beat them up and forced them away from the house leaving it to burn.

Witnesses added that soldiers kidnapped the owners of the house, Shadi and Nabeil Sader, and took them to an unknown location.

Eventually the neighbors put out the fire but the house sustained great damage.

Also today near Hebron, Israeli army bulldozers uprooted 3,000 trees that belonged to farmers from the village of Beit Ola, south of Hebron.

The farmers who own the land stated that troops arrived early in the morning and uprooted the trees. When farmers tried to protect the trees the soldiers opened fire at them, forcing them away.

http://imeu.net/news/article007597.shtml

The violence is sickening.

I guess we know how much good Annapolis did.

what happened to the owners of the house? I am sure Israel is giving the matter its usual "though investigation"

This "news report" is from a pro-palestinian blog that invites anyone to submit items. I noticed that they continually refer to "IDF kidnappings" as a euphemism for "arrests," Palestinian terrorists are the "resistance," and no one seems to have bothered to spell check anything.

They rely on obviously fake "human rights organizations" like this "friends of humanity international" site for their information, which is actually good for a laugh if you have a minute. Click on About Us and learn of their team of experts who travel the world going on fact-finding missions, yet for some reason only have a few articles posted on their barely functional, unfinished site which is suspiciously rife with similar spelling mistakes as IMEMC's site.

But their core message is beautiful. It brings tears to my eyes. Tears of laughter, sure. But tears nonetheless.

"Together we can help victims survive their agony and be happy... Let's be their true friends."

http://www.friendsofhumanity.info/en/pages/index.php?page=about


What am I saying? Some of you probably donate money to them... I can't believe any of you actually accepted this insane news story on its face. I mean seriously... this wasn't written by a journalist. You know that right?

...or that olive trees aren't uprooted in the West Bank. Clearly it's probably bullshit, just like all those reports over at B'Tselem that tell similar accounts when it comes to Hebron...

I don't see any reference in the article to 'resistance', nor do I see any typos in the article. If you want to provide some actual evidence that the article is incorrect (sneering at non-existant typos doesn't do the trick), then do it and it'll be much more convincing...

......from a pro Palestinian Blog it can't be the truth? Israeli Blogs, however, are always truthful, right?

on http://www.imemc.org/article/52316

By the way, Ghassan Bannoura, who wrote the story, was recently attacked by Palestinian security forces for covering a story on protests in Bethlehem. He seems to cover stories the powers that be don't want him to cover.

It's not like jpost will be covering these stories anytime soon.

As long as the vile behaviour of young settlers is allowed to continue unimpeded by Israeli authorities, peace will not be achieved

<snip>

"Of all the heartbreaking scenes I've witnessed during my time in this country, a recent incident on a dusty road in a Hebron valley stands head and shoulders above the rest. No blood was spilled, no bones broken, but, in the space of a few seconds, I lost all hope that there is any way out of the quicksand in which the region is forever sinking. At least, that is, while the vicious sadism of the settlers is allowed to flourish unimpeded and uncontrolled by the Israeli authorities.

Readers often try to discredit my writing by claiming a lack of context in my pieces, so before I recount the sorry tale, I'll throw in the necessary caveats. Yes, Hebron is a holy city to Jews as well as Muslims. Yes, there have been numerous murderous attacks perpetrated by Palestinian terrorists against Jewish Israelis in the area. And yes, while the situation there remains as fragile as it is at present, there are definitely justifications for at least some of the security measures that are currently in place in the city.

But nothing - repeat, nothing - can excuse the cruelty and malice that a gang of five settler youths brazenly displayed in front of us that afternoon. I was in the area shadowing a team of Ecumenical Accompaniers (EA), an organisation similar in essence to Temporary International Presence in the City of Hebron (TIPH), though less official and therefore far less limited by diplomatic restrictions in their monitoring of the situation. That said, even they are terrified to intervene when it comes to settler crimes, believing that the army will do nothing to protect them from the inevitable savagery the settlers are notorious for dishing out to international observers.

We had headed over to a Palestinian farmer's field where, for the last four days, settlers have been illegally constructing a house out of rocks in the middle of his land. Various half-hearted attempts by the army to disperse the invaders have had little effect, as we saw when we arrived at the scene. Five teenage boys and girls were nonchalantly guarding their half-built structure, casually shooting the breeze with one another - until we turned up, that is.

Screaming at me with the husky tones of a voice in the throes of breaking, one of the boys demanded that I put down my camera and "get the hell out of here". Nonplussed by his assumption that he held some kind of authority over me, I ignored his cries and carried on photographing him and his partners in crime.

Stalking towards me with what he considered to be a great degree of menace, he again snarled that I should stop taking photos, "or I'll kill you". Given the size of him, I couldn't help but laugh, at which point he demanded to see my ID, "or I'll call the police." "Call them by all means," I replied, as one of the settler girls strutted over to take my photo in an attempt to show that two could play at my game.

Facing off like duellers brandishing pistols at dawn, the ludicrous stand-off only ended when my EA hosts decided that we'd done enough and that it would be prudent to head off in case the kids' parents showed up on the scene. Decamping to a vantage point on a nearby hill, we kept an eye on the situation, which was when the true horror of the children's superiority complexes came to light.

As a Palestinian man rode slowly up the road to the side of the field, the boys raced towards him with their female counterparts bounding along in their wake, long dresses billowing in the wind. Surrounding the man and forcing him to stop, they furiously demanded that he turn his animal round and ride back from whence he came, and the worst part of it all was that the man, a full 10 years older than them, just meekly complied with their orders.

This was the brutal, playground-bully side of the settlers that has become so embedded in their psyches that even their youth think they run the town, like some kind of pre-pubescent sheriff's posse. At the same time, this was the cowed and beaten side of the local Palestinians, who have long given up trying to retain their dignity or demanding equal treatment at the hands of their oppressors. "

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/seth_freedman/2008/01/the_cruelty_of_youths.html

The only source for it anywhere is the IMEMC article (which has been reprinted in numerous other locations, such as the one you've linked to).

The reporting seems to be somewhat lacking (no sources quoted other than anonymous ones, no attempts to get a statement from the IDF, etc).

It would be helpful if there was corroboration of this incident somewhere (Ma'an, Al-Jazeera, etc.).

At the very least, there must've been some context (or pretext). Were the man who were taken away by the soldiers wanted by Israel for anything? Were the settlers who set fire to the house apprehended?