Dozens of Jewish men were abducted and beaten in a mob attack in the
Binyamin region on Tuesday afternoon. The men were set upon by an Arab
mob, chased down, tied up and beaten senseless.
One of the men told Arutz Sheva about the vicious attack. The men
were attacked as they were walking from the Jewish village of Esh Kodesh
to the nearby Givat Hayovel.
Suddenly, they were set upon by an Arab mob, he said. “They blocked
us in with trucks. The Arabs started hurling rocks at the Jewish group.”
The Jews were forced to hide nearby, he continued. “We called the
army, because we felt our lives were in danger. The Arabs gathered us
into one place, tied our hands and legs, and beat us cruelly,” he said.
The beatings were so severe that he passed out, he said.
The army arrived, and convinced local Arab leaders to order the
Jewish men released. The victim who spoke to Arutz Sheva said that IDF
officers seemed to blame the victims.
He recalled that one officer told him, “You came to do a ‘price tag’
and now you’re going to get it.” Jews living in Judea and Samaria have
widely been blamed for “price tag” attacks - nationalistically-motivated
vandalism targeting Arab-owned property - despite evidence that most
perpetrators of such vandalism are not from the region.
The Israelis, who appeared to be aged between 15 and 30, were
detained in an uninhabited house on the outskirts of the Palestinian
village of Qusra after what Palestinians said was a settler assault on
local farmers.
"I was tending my fields when a group of around 30
settlers came down the hill and attacked us with stones," Palestinian
farmer Mahmoud Tubasi told Reuters.
"We chased them and they fled
to a house under construction. They were cornered there and some of the
people here beat them - they had attacked us on our own land."
A
Reuters witness said the villagers beat 15 Israeli settlers with their
fists and sticks, causing some to bleed from the head and mouth.
And they weren't exactly 'released' either.
The Palestinians later released the group, whom they said came from a
nearby Jewish settlement, to Israeli soldiers, after forcing them them
pass one-by-one though a gauntlet of residents who rained blows on them.
And finally, the 'Palestinian' version of events:
Palestinian villagers from three Nablus area villages Tuesday confronted Israeli settlers who entered their fields to uproot and destroy olive trees, according to a local official.
Ghassan Daghlas, who monitors settlements in the north of the West Bank, told WAFA that settlers, protected by soldiers, proceeded to uproot newly-planted olive trees in the villages of Qaryout, Jalout and Qusra when villagers rushed to their fields to stop the settlers.
He said confrontations broke out between them and soldiers fired tear gas canisters towards the Palestinian residents. No injuries were reported.
At one point, villagers were able to hold more than a dozen settlers in the fields in spite of the Israeli army protection to the settlers.
Amazing how WAFA (from whom that summary came - I got it by email) changes the story, isn't it?
If you're a revenant, please think carefully about going outside your village without weapons. Better safe than sorry.
Caught red-handed: Arabs caught chopping down their own olive trees (video evidence)
"Caught red-handed" - Volunteers from the Shomron
Settlers Council today (Monday) filmed Arabs and a foreign activist from the
extreme Left cutting down trunks of olive trees and branches next to the
settlement of Elon Moreh, to create a provocation.
As previously mentioned, just yesterday the Shomron
Settlers Council and the Shomron Regional Council came out with a request to
Shomron residents to put cameras in their vehicles in order to document
provocations by Arabs and extreme Leftist activists during the olive harvest
season.
Due to the increase during previous years in
provocations organized by extremist Leftist activists from Israel and from
abroad, as well as by Arabs of the area, in preparation for the olive harvest,
the Shomron Settlers Council, together with the Shomron Regional Council, have
organized a photography course for the residents and Council
volunteers.
And indeed, this afternoon, already in the first
days of the harvest season, two volunteers from the Shomron Settlers Council
caught "red-handed", some Arabs and another man who joined them, likely a
foreign Leftist activist, as they were cutting down trunks and branches of olive
trees adjacent to the settlement of Elon Moreh, just a short distance from the
town and close to homes.
The Arabs and the Leftist extremist were sawing
through the trunks and branches and leaving them near the cut off trunks in an
area near the settlement's homes, as well as in another location near the
entrance to Elon Moreh.
Council volunteers photographed them in the act and
called the police.
Chairman of the Shomron Settlers Council Benny
Katzover said: "Just yesterday we called on the public to equip themselves with
cameras in order to document provocations, and already today a provocation was
filmed, the act of uprooting olive trees in real time. It's clear to everyone
that if the alert volunteers had not recorded the provocation in real time, the
whole world would have shouted and condemned the settlers and the State of
Israel."
In the wake of the incident, Shomron Regional
Council head Gershon Mesika called for acting agressively against the ones
staging the uprooting of the olive trees and to distance the provocateurs of the
extreme Left from the area during the olive harvest season:
"The olive harvest season in recent years has
turned into the provocateur's season. In light of the extreme Left's
provocations during the olive harvest in past years, the settlement enterprise
has invested much effort, in coordination with the IDF, to prevent extreme
Leftist organizations and the Palestinian Authority from taking advantage of the
season to cause provocations and take other actions. I call on the Security
services to be alert, to understand that these are sequences of events whereby
most of them take place when activists from the extreme Left, both from Israel
and from abroad, are in the area. I call on the Security services to distance
from the area, the extreme Leftists planning these provocations and thus prevent
these incidents from happening and to allow the harvest season to finish
quietly."
The 'human rights' organizations are constantly blaming Israel for interfering with the 'Palestinian' olive harvest and chopping down trees.
You've all heard about all the terrible things that the 'settlers' do to olive trees. Well, here they are in action. Yes, they're as terrible as they're made out to be.
Let's go to the videotape.
The background music is a popular Israeli song about striking roots in Israel through nature, trees and fruits of the land.
At least they're less biased than Press TV (Iran), which published the picture at top left (can you tell from the picture at left that the person who is either starting - or trying to put out - the fire is a 'settler'?) and claimed that 'settlers' had burned 'hundreds' of olive trees in the 'West Bank.'
But AFP could not tell a balanced story that noted doubtful 'Palestinian' claims that Israelis burned their olive trees - balanced against the fact that no incidents of burning trees were reported by the 'Palestinians' or anyone else - without throwing in an unsubstantiated accusation against Israelis that was left hanging.
Since the start of the olive harvest last month, there have been scores of Palestinian complaints about settlers cutting down trees, stealing olives or preventing farmers from harvesting their crops, rights groups and police say.
A senior Israeli intelligence officer acknowledged that there had been acts of violence and vandalism by Jews in the West Bank, noting in particular recent attacks against mosques there.
"We are not happy about the situation connected with Jewish extremists in the West Bank," he told a group of foreign journalists on Sunday, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"It needs big efforts in order to stop this wave of violence. We know who are these people. Hopefully we will be able to stop this wave of violence", he added.
There has not been a single 'recent' instance in which Jews have been shown to have burned mosques or anything else. However, the 'Palestinians' and their Leftist supporters have been caught on video burning fields and trees.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
