Thread: Israeli Settlers

These people just appall me. I should point out, there are settlers and there are Settlers. They probably aren't all bad, although they are all living on illegally usurped land. Some of the larger illegal Settlements are now cities in their own right. If a Peace deal is arrived at, it is quite possible that some of the larger Settlements will form part of Israel, in exchange for land elsewhere that will go to Palestine.

Many of the worst ones live in 'Illegal settlements' as described by Israel- sometimes called Outposts. How can something be doubly illegal- although the Israeli government still helps pay for them, amazingly. ' And what a vile bunch they are. They are an implacable, and often violent, foe of the Israeli / Palestinian Peace process, and unsurprisingly they have picked up their terrorist activities lately, with the current peace process happening.

So this thread is to shine a torch on the Settlers movement, and their deeds.


In West Bank, Peace Symbol Now Signifies Struggle


TURMUS AYA, West Bank — Palestinians from villages like this one in the West Bank governorate of Ramallah still remember when the olive harvest was a joyous occasion, with whole families out for days in the fall sunshine, gathering the year’s crop and picnicking under the trees.

“We considered it like a wedding,” said Hussein Said Hussein Abu Aliya, 68.

But when Mr. Abu Aliya and his family from the neighboring village of Al-Mughayer — 36 of them in all, including grandchildren — drove out to their land this week in a snaking convoy of cars and pickup trucks with others from Turmus Aya, they found scores of their trees on the rocky slopes in various stages of decay, recently poisoned, they said, by Jewish settlers from an illegal Israeli outpost on top of the hill.

Branches drooped, the once lush, silver-green leaves were turning brown and the few olives still clinging on, which should have been plump and green or purple by harvest time, were shriveled and black. Dozens of trees nearby that Mr. Abu Aliya contended were similarly poisoned with chemicals last year stood like spindly skeletons, gray and completely bare.

Religious Jewish settlers consider the West Bank, which Israel captured from Jordan in the 1967 war, as their biblical birthright. For the 2.5 million Palestinians of the West Bank, it constitutes the heartland of a future independent state. While the Americans and Palestinians wrangle with the Israeli government over continued Israeli construction in the West Bank settlements — an issue that has stalled the embryonic peace talks — the competition for control of each acre of land here is being played out day by day.

And the olive tree, an ancient symbol of peace and plenty that has also long been a Palestinian emblem of steadfastness and commitment to the land, has increasingly become a symbol of local, almost intimate, struggle and strife.

Husniya al-Araj, 60, said she was born in a cave nearby, in an orchard of olive and almond trees. But when she reached her family lands this week, she cried out in shock. She pointed to a newly plowed field in front of her that she said was part of her family property, but that seemed to have been taken over by the settlers. It was now surrounded by a shiny new barbed-wire fence and planted with young vines.

Mahmud Ahmad Hazama, a relative who takes care of the Araj family property, said the barbed-wire fence went up in July. Folded in his wallet was a handwritten record of every change and every complaint Mr. Hazama had made to the Israeli Army and police since 1995.

“They ask me for documents,” he said. “We have all of them. The last thing they asked for was a topographic map.” He said he had received no answers so far.

Micky Rosenfeld, an Israeli police spokesman, said the police were aware of the problems. Every complaint is investigated, he says, but sometimes the culprits turn out not to be settlers, and sometimes there is not enough evidence to know. In some cases, the complaints do lead to arrests of settlers, he says.

Tamar Asraf, spokeswoman for the Binyamin Council, which represents the settlers in this region, said that for the most part the olive harvest passes peacefully, but that there were Palestinians and settlers who cause damage to one another. “We condemn them both,” she said.

Mr. Hazama’s relatives, like many other families, found their olive trees intact but empty of fruit. They argued that the olives must have been stolen by settlers, though they had no proof.

In other villages to the north, like Yanoun, Jit and Imatin, olives were stolen from hundreds of trees in the past few days, according to Rabbis for Human Rights, an Israeli organization that helps Palestinians farm lands in trouble spots year-round.

This was the first time the villagers of Turmus Aya and Al-Mughayer had been able to have access to their lands in six months. To do so, they need permission and protection from the Israeli Army, for a few days for plowing in springtime and a few days for picking in the fall. In the past, unprotected visits to the land ended with many stories of attacks by extremist settlers and burned cars.

This time, soldiers were guarding the villagers from the hilltop where the outpost, Adei Ad, sits. Three soldiers in khaki uniforms were sitting under one of Mr. Abu Aliya’s trees, almost camouflaged among its iridescent leaves while mountain gazelles sprang across the hills.

Adei Ad was established in the late 1990s on state and private Palestinian land, according to Israeli records. Though it was established without any official authorization, the Israeli Ministry of Housing and Construction provided financing for some of the infrastructure.

About 30 families live in trailers at Adei Ad, which has been scheduled for removal for seven years. The settlers have now put up an “eruv,” an elevated string on poles that encircles a community and allows observant Jews to carry objects within the proscribed area on the Sabbath. Mr. Abu Aliya has no idea what the string is for, but he says it runs right through his land.

This year, the harvest was less of a celebration, and more a show of perseverance. The Palestinian Authority governor of the Ramallah district, Laila Ghannam, joined the olive pickers and ate breakfast with the mayor of Turmus Aya under a tree.

“Our presence here is proof that this is our land and we will never give it up,” she said.

Members of a new unit from the authority’s Ministry of Agriculture were also out in the fields with notebooks, documenting the villagers’ complaints and counting the poisoned trees. They took samples of wilting branches to send to an Israeli laboratory for testing in the hope that the results could be used as future evidence in an Israeli court.

Mr. Abu Aliya, who has lost about half of his 300 olive trees, made a promise. “The moment the settlers leave,” he said, “I’ll make a big celebration. I’ll slaughter a buffalo.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/13/wo...html?ref=world


A lot of Israeli's feel the same way about the settlers as Abu Aliya.

The Settlers movement is actually widely disliked in Israel. Some of this dislike, especially from the Left, is political- because they are camping on Palestinian land. Some is moral repugnance at the regular violent and/ or disruptive actions of their extremist elements. Some is religious- many settlers are fundamentalist Jews, most Israeli's are actually pretty secular. But probably above all, the Settlers are leeches- a financial drain on the state of Israel, which supplies security, transport and infrastructure to these settlements at great cost. Like the Haredim (ultra religious Jews that do not work or serve in the Army), there is a good deal of resentment amongst the mainstream Israeli population, that subsidises these two groups.

Haaretz is considered Israels most influential newspaper, and this recent editorial from Bradley Burston- an American born Israeli- pretty much gives you a liberal Israeli's Pov-


Confessions of an Israeli anti-settler bigot

I needed to hear it. Even though I knew that when I did, I'd be livid.

The freeze still had eight hours to run, but in a small settlement outside the shinbone-in-the-throat settler city of Ariel, it was time to humiliate the president of the United States. I needed to hear it. I turned up the car radio. A drainage ditch of a voice.

"From this stage I turn to Hussein Obama and tell him, 'The Land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel.'"

It was Gershon Mesika, head of the regional council of the settlers of the northern West Bank, laying a cornerstone for new construction, and he wasn't through with the president yet.

"Throughout history, leaders have conspired against the people of Israel, but [the people of Israel] live on, while [the leaders] have disappeared off the history pages," Mesika announced.

"So we will continue to build and develop the communities, in spite of the opposition of all the oppressors, inside and outside."

They say the first step in dealing with rage is acknowledging it. So here it is: I have become a bigot where it comes to the settlement movement.

I believe that the officials, the activists, and the Diaspora bankrollers and rooting section of this movement have ruined my life. They ruin it a little more every single day.

The extent to which they have embittered the lives of millions of Palestinians is incalculable. I won't pretend to know what they go through or how it feels. For the moment, I just want to talk about what the settlement movement does to its fellow Israelis, and why so many of us are so fed up.

We struck a bargain years ago. This was how it worked for me: I would donate a month a year away from home to keep them safe and in exchange the movement did everything it could to antagonize the Palestinians, to make it impossible for them to have a state of their own, to make it impossible for Israel to make peace with them.

I wanted to make peace with the Palestinians. I wanted them to have a state. I wanted the occupation to end. Some bargain. I lost.

I struck another deal. Year after year I would pay high taxes to subsidize settlement houses, their private highways, their utilities, their yeshivas, the bottomless cost of safeguarding remote and illegal outposts. A theater in Ariel.

In return, settler leaders and activists spearheaded civil and military policies that trampled Palestinian rights to water, highway use, personal security, and housing, and to medical, educational and vocational opportunity. Rabbis and yeshiva directors whose salaries I paid, turned a blind eye to, or actively encouraged attacks against Palestinians, their livestock and property. Rabbis and yeshiva directors whose salaries I paid incited their students in uniform to refuse government orders to evict settlers, and stood up for their students in outlaw enclaves who branded IDF soldiers as Nazis.

Some bargain.

I kept trying. I watched from the sidelines as vast resources were diverted from decaying and depressed towns and villages within Israel, to support ever-expanding settlements, many of them receiving official permission only years after they were built.

In return for my acquiescence, the settlement movement blackened Israel's democracy and its very name. We gave them Yitzhak Rabin and they gave us Avigdor Lieberman.

Settlement has long been, and remains, the fuel for the fire of de-legitimization of Israel, the basis of charges of apartheid and ethnic cleansing. It undermines the foundation of the idea of a Jewish state. It turns the very word settlement into an obscenity.

The movement blackmails and terrorizes and intimidates fellow Israelis into fearing the price of evacuating settlers more deeply than they fear the diplomatic isolation, the wars, the loss of majority rule that leaving settlements in place entails. To make its members feel better, it declares that anyone who says Jews can’t live wherever they want is a racist. Even though in the real world, no one simply gets to live where they want, no matter whose land it is, no matter where, and certainly not just because God told them to.

Now they are set to ruin Jerusalem. A toxic cocktail of shady foreign donors, government backing for cockamamie tourism projects, and bottom-feeder activists in the volatile Palestinian quarters of Silwan and Sheikh Jarrah, threatens to set a new definition of chaos. New evictions. Fresh violence. New bargains, new casualties.

Every morning the settlements expand, the democratic and Jewish character of Israel is undermined, Israel's standing as a member of the community of nations is called further into question, and the support of this country's indispensible American ally is clouded, casting a shadow over the security of everyone here.

Like many a bigot, I truly have no quarrel with the vast majority of the Jewish residents of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. But I do not want them to force the majority of Israelis, myself included, to live in a new Arab country which retains the name of Israel. I have no problem at all with Arab countries. But I didn't come here to live in one.

The majority here wants a state of Israel alongside a sovereign and separate state of Palestine. The majority is fed up. The majority sees the settlements as a bad bargain for Israel. The majority is tired of being pushed around. The majority loves Israel and wants it to continue to exist.

We need a new bargain, this time with the Palestinians. And we need more courage than we know. In a Yom Kippur sermon on the meaning of courage, Rabbi Keith Stern of Newton, Mass., said "If we are afraid to fail, then we are useless. If we are afraid of criticism, we are useless. If we are afraid to stand up and speak the truth because the truth is not a popular commodity, then we are useless."

The majority must make a choice.

I've made mine. The actions of Ariel in rushing out bulldozers to break the freeze this week made the decision for me. I support the boycott of Ariel. My taxes and my betrayed votes for Labor and my army service built that place. As far as I'm concerned, the deal's done. The bargain's over. The settlers are not my enemy, but the settlements are. I want my country back.

http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/a-speci...bigot-1.316325


In the somewhat occluded media coverage we receive on the Israel/ Palestine situation in the West, I feel we don't receive enough information on what is happening in Israel itself- and Israel has a free and vibrant press. It is certainly not true to think that Israel is just a land of Zionists. Actually, most Israelite's are receptive to a Land for Peace deal- assured peace and security being the big sticking point to them.

But not the Settler movement.

Palestinian mosque torched in suspected 'price tag' operation by settlers

A Palestinian mosque was set alight and vandalized late Sunday night in what police suspected was a "price tag" operation by nearby settlers wishing to protest Israel's West Bank policies.

..Residents rushed to the mosque when they saw the flames and began fighting with settlers at the scene, they added.
Israeli soldiers arrived in the area and broke up the fight and forced the settlers to leave.

... The attack is thought to be the latest in so-called "price tag" operations, intended to pressure the Israel government away from making concessions regarding settlement building in the West Bank.
Carpets in the mosque and about a dozen copies of the Koran, the Muslim holy book, were burnt, witnesses said.

Palestinian mosque torched in suspected 'price tag' operation by settlers - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News

This happened in early October, but 'Price Tag' attacks and vandalising and/or stealing of Palestinian land is quite a regular occurrence with the settlers. The particularly militant settlers tend to be in the more far flung illegal outposts.

You may wonder from the above article- why weren't the arsonists, caught red handed, detained by the military? Good question indeed. Unfortunately the IDF regulars (as opposed to reservists) are heavily composed of settlers, or people that share their anti-Palestinian sentiment. Their tendency to look the other way is well known.

Sabang are you aware of the West Bank Strategic value?

Should Israel simply roll over and leave themselves even more open to rocket attacks like they're getting from Gaza?

Aside from the fact of these rag-tag Pali's and their bomb-throwing habits, at least the Jooooos are settling the land and turning a scrap heap, a desert, into another Garden.

I say good on ém!

Originally Posted by Boon Mee

at least the Jooooos are settling the land and turning a scrap heap, a desert, into another Garden.

if you had ever been there you would not show your ignorance

they Israelis have stolen land which was orchards as well as desert. They are not turning the land into anything except building sites, walled fortress ones at that

They're not turning it into another garden. They're actually making it slowly uninhabitable.

Get back to the border of '67 (or is it the one from '69?), stop kicking out Palestinians.

The Arabs will accept it.

Things have only happened under the conservatives in Israel, now is the time Netanjahu should do something. Unfortunately he has the devil by his side and gets blackmailed.

Maybe its time to look at a coalition with Labor.

all their parliaments are hung, so the minority madmen get a say in what happens

Nettanyahu is terrifed of losing power, so does anything they say

If you were Israeli and you wanted your children to have a miserable and violent life then you'd fully support the 'settlers' activities.

If, on the other hand, you wanted to build a future without violence then you might want to build a relationship with your neigbours that doesn't include kicking them out of their house, 100% breaking against all international and local laws...

These walls built in Iraq, border-'territories' or any other place at any other time in history, are always negative and always come tumbling down sooner or later. It is no solution.

There are 2 sides to this coin, but at the most basic level: people who have a home, jobs, cable tv, schools for their kids and generally a pleasant existance, don't want to be bothered with violence and conflict. Adversely, folk who have no home, security or hope, will turn to extreme violence. Look at the Germans for example, very similar to any other Western Europeans; decent folk, yet in the desperate times of the 30's their desperation drove them to events we couldn't imagine today - that's human beings for you; them, us, all.

If 10% of the money that Israel spends on violence and terror against the Ps was spent on improving the Ps lives instead (that means not invading their homes...) then they'd all have a start at a decent future. Wouldn't serve the political purposes of them or the Americans though; they want to be at war and continue down the avenue to war; the Israeli government has shown time and time again that they do not want peace in the region; it doesn't benefit them; sooner or later the Israeli masses must realise this and force their government to change.

Below is a link to recent settler violence in September/ October 2010-


This report highlights three worrying phenomena related to the strengthening of the settlers and to the tacit recognition of the illegal settlements in the West Bank, as well as to the settlers’ violence against Palestinians.

First, these last two months have been characterized by an expansion of the geographical area in which violent settler attacks took place. For example the Jericho District, generally spared from settler attacks, was targeted twice in two months.

Second, there is increasing cooperation between settlers and the Israeli army. The end of the settlement freeze has indeed led to army intervention and participation in building, including helping to bulldoze targeted Palestinian lands.

Last, but unfortunately not least, settlers have demonstrated increasing organization in their actions. In the same area, on the same day, different sites have been attacked in the same manner, as can be seen throughout this report. More demonstrations of violence have also been witnessed through these last two months, from important groups of settlers gathering with a common agreement for a shared and coordinated attack.

As you will see throughout this report, the settlers' recent attacks took place almost on a daily basis, especially in the northern West Bank. As they grow more organized, spread across the West Bank and are supported by the army, the Israeli settler violence against the Palestinians reach a worrying threshold.


Full Report-

Israeli Settlers

And here is a report of demolitions of Palestinian properties, and displacement of the residents, in the last three days:-

Wave of Israeli Demolitions, Displacements in West Bank, East Jerusalem

Example (one of several)-

On Thursday morning (25 November), Israeli forces demolished a number of Palestinian structures in at least 2 different locations in the West Bank, displacing at least 31 Palestinians, more than half of them children.


One must surely lack humanity if you cannot feel sorry for these people.

Neither side is in the right here. But Israel uses the issues of construction as a negotiating issue with the US, freeze new building permits for 8 months. Construction of current continues, then unfreeze, issue a heap of building permits, carry on about the 'evil terrorists', then freeze new permits while the current building is allowed to continue. Continue ad finitum. Why the US panders to this, I'll have no idea !

Give Israel/Palestine back to the Arabs and let the Jews settle in Arizona.

It would save all that aid money going overseas, would keep the Arabs happy thereby maintaining a stable oil price, and would give the Jews another lump of desert to farm.

Just tell them Jesus founded Las Vegas. If there is enough money in it they probably won't care.

Everyone wins.

But will the people of Arizona accept them?

There's a perfectly inhabitable peace of land in Siberia that Stalin carved out for them. I think it even got the status of SSR. Starts with B if I recall correctly.

Originally Posted by Thormaturge

Give Israel/Palestine back to the Arabs and let the Jews settle in Arizona.

It would save all that aid money going overseas, would keep the Arabs happy thereby maintaining a stable oil price, and would give the Jews another lump of desert to farm.

Just tell them Jesus founded Las Vegas. If there is enough money in it they probably won't care.

Everyone wins.

quite a good plan actually. How long before the Israelis extremists claim more land than they are given and start a war with the locals over god given land ? could be highly entertaining to watch. Let's see if the Republican right wing nutters are as tolerant then with Israeli settlements.

On a hillside outside Jerusalem stands a restaurant devoted to Elvis Presley (The new 'King' of the Jews) so Las Vegas may indeed seem an appropriate resettlement area. Might save a life or three. God save the King etc:

Gallup Poll: Israel Viewed Favorably by 68% of Americans, Only 19% Feel Same Way About the Palestinians

Obama is said to be in mourning...

Israel was viewed favorably by 68 percent of Americans, while the Palestinian Authority only had a 19 percent favorability rating, according to Gallup’s annual World Affairs poll, released Friday.Iran and North Korea have been the two lowest-rated countries in the poll every year since 2004. This year they tied at the bottom with only 11 percent favorability ratings, according to the poll.


Poll: Israel viewed favorably by 68% of those in US

There was a good documentary on these Jewish settlers by Louis Theroux last week. It shows what deluded idiots most of them really are, surprisingly or not many of them are not true Israelis but Americans who have moved to Israel primarily to live in the settlements.

yea the word they used was 'idealist' in that program
the idea,,something plucked from thin air
that god gave them the land
israeli settlers !! israeli land robbers
and then throwing the rightful owners off the land.
a bunch of scammers and con merchants
is what the israeli goverment is,,criminals.
all backed up with nukes.
and causing meyhem around the planet.

I shouldn't even comment on this topic...because as other posts have already demostrated often when a person's passions become inflamed the first thing he or she loses is their common sense.
Passion overides Reason...that's a common reaction of Hman Beings.
Anyway, I will risk telling this story.
Some years ago the BBC World Service had a program on the (whatever) anniversity of the founding of Israel. i think it may have been in 1997, which I believe was the 50th anniversity of the founding of Israel...but I may ne mistaken about that.
One of their interviews was with an Israeli citizen whose family first came to the then Palestine in 1936 from Germany. He was a young boy then.
He described how the local Arabs helped the first settlersto learn how to farm the land. He talked about his experiences with the British forces in WWII to help defend Palestine. He talked about being a young man and going to the local Arab villages for weddings and births of the families of his Arab friends he grew up with. He talked about living next to those Arab villages for all his life. He also talked about how the Arab-Israeli wars affected his life and how it had changed his relations with his life long Arab neighbor friends.
Then the announcer asked what regrets he had. He said, yes, there was one recent incident that still bothered him. He told them that his grandson, who attended a local Israeli school, had been beaten up by a group of youngsters from a Israeli settlement village. These settler families had recently arrived from the U.S. (New York) and had come to Israel to settle. The parents had encouraged their children to beat up his grandson because they knew the grandson's family had some local Arab friends...and in in their mind that made his family not sufficenly Jewish.
The grandfather asked when, after all that time in Israel...even before it was Israel.... the settlers would consider his grandson to be sufficently Jewish...much less an Israeli in their minds.
Good question, isn't it?