Israeli forces have long been criticised by human rights groups for standing idly by during settler attacks – or even taking part in them.<\/p>\n
This week, Israel’s chief of staff said he strongly condemned the recent violence by Israeli settlers, calling it “a red line” and promising to “act decisively”.<\/p>\n
The head of the army’s central command, Maj Gen Avi Bluth – the man addressed in the graffiti on Hamida Mosque – said violent acts by what he called “anarchist fringe youth” were “unacceptable and extremely serious” and must be dealt with firmly.<\/p>\n
Some hardline settlers see these comments as a betrayal.<\/p>\n
Amichai Luria, a long-time settler from Ma’ale Levona and manager of a winery in the nearby settlement of Shiloh, told me the current focus on settler violence was overblown.<\/p>\n
“It’s amazing to me how people talk about these rare occasions [when] people misbehave,” he said. “Oh, some people were trying to pick olives and some Jews came and bothered them. Give me a break. There are more muggings on the main street in London than there [are] here.”<\/p>\n
I asked him about the severe beating of women and the near-daily reports of incidents in surrounding areas. He dismissed them as an “attempt to make the Jews look bad”.<\/p>\n
“Most of the Arabs, if they could, would follow Hamas or Hezbollah. Very, very, very few want to coexist or live in peace, and at the first opportunity they have, they’re going to wipe us out,” he said.<\/p>\n
“The future is very simple. Hopefully the army will wake up, hopefully people will understand that we have to prepare ourselves, that they’re coming for us.”<\/p>\n
The UN’s Office of Humanitarian Affairs says that, of the 1,000 Palestinians killed in the West Bank since the Gaza War began, between 20 and 32 were killed by Israeli settlers. During the same period, it says, Palestinians killed 19 Israeli civilians.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Israeli forces have long been criticised by human rights groups for standing idly by during settler attacks –…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":263361,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-263360","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263360\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}