The settlements -Israel's breeding ground for Jewish terrorism
Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada, 30 September 2008
Left-wing
Israeli activists demonstrate against Jewish settlements in the West
Bank city of Hebron, January 2007. (Mamoun Wazwaz/MaanImages)
The words "Jewish" and "terrorist" are not easily uttered together by
Israelis. But just occasionally, such as last week when one of the
country's leading intellectuals was injured by a pipe bomb placed at
the front door of his home, they find themselves with little choice.
The target of the attack was 73-year-old Zeev Sternhell, a politics
professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem specializing in European
fascism and a prominent supporter of the left-wing group Peace Now.
Shortly after the explosion, police found pamphlets nearby offering 1.1
million shekels ($300,000) to anyone assassinating a Peace Now leader.
The movement's most visible activity has been tracking and criticizing
the growth of the settlements in the West Bank.
Sternhell, whose leg was injured in the blast, warned that this attack
might mark the "collapse of democracy" in Israel. He has earned the
enmity of the religious far-right by justifying the targeting of
settlers by Palestinians in their resistance to occupation.
Earlier in the year the professor was awarded the Israel Prize for
political science. The settlers' own news agency, Arutz Sheva, ran a
story at the time headlined "Israel Prize to go to Pro-Terror,
Pro-Civil War Prof."
The shock provoked in Israel by the bombing partly reflected the rarity
of such attacks. Most Israelis regard the use of violence by Jews
against other Jews as entirely illegitimate, which partly explains the
kid-glove approach generally adopted by the security forces when
dealing with the settlers.
There are a handful of precedents, however, for these kind of attacks.
In 1983, Emil Grunzweig was killed when a right-winger hurled a hand
grenade into a crowd of Peace Now activists marching against Israel's
invasion of Lebanon. And 12 years later Israelis were left reeling when
a religious settler, Yigal Amir, shot dead their prime minister,
Yitzhak Rabin.
Violence directed at the Jewish Left typically peaks during periods
when the religious far-right believes a deal with the Palestinians may
be close at hand. Rabin paid the price for his signing of the Oslo
accords. Equally, Sternhell appears to be the address for settler
grievances over the government's ongoing talks with the Palestinians
over a partial Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank.
Certainly, the mood among the religious settlers has grown darker since
the disengagement from Gaza three years ago. A significant number
subscribe to the belief that, in betraying what they perceive to be the
Jewish people's Biblical birthright to Palestinian territory, the
government proved itself unworthy of their loyalty. Others believe that
the settlers themselves failed a divine test in not facing down the
government and army.
Either way, many far-right settlers are turning their backs on those
secular laws that clash with their own convictions. One Israeli
observer has noted that these settlers no longer see their chief
loyalty to the state of Israel but to the Land of Israel, a land
promised by God not politicians.
The pamphlet found near Sternhell's home, signed by a group called the
"Army of Liberators," read: "The State of Israel has become our enemy."
The Shin Bet, Israel's secret police, have a Jewish department
dedicated to tracking the activities of Jewish terrorists. Unlike the
Shin Bet's Arab department, however, it is small and underfunded. It
has also proved largely ineffectual in dealing with the threat posed by
the far-right.
Jewish extremists who attack Israeli soldiers or Palestinians in the
occupied territories, openly incite against Palestinians or express
unlawful views rarely face charges, even when there is clear evidence
of wrongdoing.
The general lawlessness among the West Bank settlers has reached new
peaks, underscored this month when settlers from Yitzhar went on what
was widely described as a "pogrom" against Palestinians in the
neighboring village of Asira al-Qabaliya. The settlers were caught on
film firing live ammunition at the villagers, but the police have so
far failed to issue indictments.
Also, often forgotten, the so-called Jewish underground has a history
of targeting Palestinians inside Israel, including those with
citizenship. A car bomb narrowly avoided seriously injuring the wife of
Arab Knesset member Issam Makhoul in 2003. Two years later, in the
run-up to the Gaza disengagement, a settler-soldier, Natan Zada, shot
dead four passengers on a bus to the Israeli Arab city of Shafa'amr.
Groups such as the Temple Mount Faithful, which seek to blow up the
mosques of al-Aqsa and Dome of the Rock in the Haram al-Sharif of
Jerusalem's Old City so that a third Jewish temple can be built in
their place, also face little recourse from the Shin Bet.
By contrast, the Shin Bet's Arab department runs an extensive network
of Palestinian informers in the occupied territories and is reported by
human rights groups to use torture to extract information from
Palestinian detainees.
Inside Israel, the Arab department regularly investigates Israel's own
Palestinian citizens, especially the Islamic movements over their
donations to charities in the occupied territories. It has also been
hounding parties like the National Democratic Assembly of Azmi Bishara
that demand equal rights.
Like Palestinians in the occupied territories, Palestinian citizens risk being locked up on secret evidence.
Israel's leading columnist Nahum Barnea noted last week that the Shin
Bet's inability to find and arrest Jewish terrorists stemmed from
"deliberate policy" and "emotional obstacles" -- his coy way of
suggesting that many in the Shin Bet share at least some of the
settlers' values, even if they reject their methods.
Prof. Sternhell made much the same point in a radio interview from his
hospital bed when he noted that Yitzhak Shamir, when he was prime
minister, had defined the Jewish underground as "excellent young men,
real patriots."
In this vacuum of law enforcement, the far-right regularly and openly
engages in unlawful activities, often without serious threat of
punishment. Many of its leaders, such as Noam Federman, Itamar Ben Gvir
and Baruch Marzel, all based in Hebron, are believed to have close
links to the outlawed Kach movement, which demands the ethnic cleansing
of Palestinians from the region.
Ben Gvir, who leads a group known as the Jewish National Front, denied
that his faction was involved in the attack on Sternhell but refused to
condemn it.
Although the head of the Shin Bet, Avi Dichter, immediately branded the
attack on Sternhell as "a nationalist terror attack apparently
perpetrated by Jews," it is noticeable that no Israelis are demanding
the demolition of the perpetrators' homes.
That contrasts strongly with the response last week after a Palestinian
youth drove a car at a group of Israeli soldiers near the Old City of
Jerusalem. Israeli politicians called for the youth's home to be
destroyed and his family to be made homeless.
In the general outcry against the bomb attack last week, it was left to
Prof. Sternhell to remind Israelis that most Jewish terrorism was in
fact directed not at people like himself but at Palestinians.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
This article originally appeared in The National published in Abu Dhabi and is republished with permission.
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