Israel Police turned a blind eye to a lynching
What happened Friday afternoon at the entrance to the settlement of Anatot was a pogrom, a lynching. Media outlets that don't see fit to report a pogrom of this magnitude are partners in the policy, or the sins of omission, of abandonment.
By Eyal RazWere you ever at a lynching? Were you ever someplace where an unbridled mob was beating you and your friends and then chasing you to beat you again? Were you ever the victim of wild violence before the blind eyes of policemen who ignored your desperate calls for help? Have you ever felt abandoned? The following story begins with with blood, but its point is the abandonment.
What happened Friday afternoon at the entrance to the settlement of Anatot was a pogrom, a lynching. There's no other way to describe an event in which hundreds of large men are wildly beating and pursuing a nonviolent group of male and female activists for an extended period of time. There's no way to convey to those who weren't there the threatening sense of the approaching dark - not in words, not in pictures, not even in video.
They came to destroy, to break, perhaps even to kill. They used their hands, their fists and their teeth, along with stones, pipes and knives. They aimed for the photographers, the women, for the young and the old alike. They brought individuals down to the ground and assaulted them as they lay there, surrounded. They pounced on the hindmost of those trying to flee as they pursued their battered victims.
And all this was taking place before the very eyes of the police, who didn't do a thing to prevent people from being hurt. It all passed, as usual, in a thunderous silence.
Those who abandoned the Palestinian family that had come to work its land that Friday afternoon were not the rioters who sent the family to the hospital. Those who allowed the mob to wreak havoc on the Ta'ayush and Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity activists who were present at the site that evening stood outside the circle of assailants. They did their bit, but they personally are just one rib of a multilayered structure.
How can one explain the blind eye turned by the policemen present at the site? How can one explain why they didn't know, or didn't think, that their job was to stop the pogrom?
Perhaps the fact that Anatot's residents aren't radicals like Baruch Marzel played a role. Anatot residents aren't "hilltop youth" or "wild weeds." They are ordinary Israelis, former Jerusalemites who upgraded themselves to a "quality of life" settlement - including employees of the police, who were given preferential purchasing terms there. There are even suspicions, based on testimony and evidence gathered over the last few days, that a few of the rioters were off-duty policemen themselves.
And perhaps it is the deep-rooted hatred of "Arabs" and "leftists." Perhaps this hatred also made it easier for those on duty at the Shai District police stations, who received our calls for help, not to rush to send forces there. And even when two patrol cars did finally arrive, the policemen devoted most of their energy to informing the battered activists that an order had been issued declaring the site a closed military zone, which they were now violating.
And you should know that these are the same police stations at which the victims are supposed to file their complaints. It was, for instance, to one of them that a friend of mine was referred when he sought to repair his destroyed car. So far, he has refrained from doing so, for fear of meeting his assailants there.
Today, there is no protection for anyone who isn't on the side of the establishment, who isn't in the right-wing camp. And in the absence of such protection on the part of the agencies entrusted with upholding the law, responsibility passes to the media, which gives the public information.
Media outlets that don't see fit to report a pogrom of this magnitude are partners in the policy, or the sins of omission, of abandonment. The same goes for those who term it a "confrontation," or a "clash," or any of those other laundered words that indicate mutuality; and for those who fail to do their job of investigating and checking the facts and make do with "reporting each side's version of events;" and for those who opt to downplay a news story that they know full well would, under other circumstances, immediately become the lead headline.
"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor," Desmond Tutu once wrote. This story begins with blood, but its point is the abandonment. For that is what will enable more blood to be shed in the future. And anyone who doesn't cry out against it is a party to it.
The writer is an activist in the Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity movement.
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How on earth do you ever hope to obtain a quality of life by engaging in illegal activities such as settlements. Unless you determine being a criminal is a mark of quality.
"Shin Bet warns: Rightist violence getting out of hand". Duh. "Getting"? Like we need the Shin Bet to tell us this?
there is a real problem with mindless violence and thinking it's applicable (in a practical manner) to whomever doesn't think that thugs are right.
there is a real problem with mindless violence and thinking it's applicable (in a practical manner) to whomever doesn't think that thugs are right.
This is one of the many reasons why the moral integrity of the Israeli Government is questioned throughout the free world. The IDF is described as a rabble and the foreign minister is a thuggish ex-bouncer. Those of us who read the bible would like to support and respect Israel but their thuggish behaviour towards the Palestinians gives us pause and we shake our heads in frustration.
I'm of course against any 'lynching". But one small question: For what reason did you and your friends come up to the entry of Anatot in the first place? To demonstrate against the settlement, I guess... Seems the people of Anatot took it a bit too personal...
They went with a Palestinian family working their land near the settlement. In cases like that activists often go with the Palestinians to try and deter violence by settlers by providing witnesses.
they forced their way into a yishuv in order to cause trouble...
Some sentences cannot logically or morally be followed by 'but...'. "I'm of course against ANY 'lynching'" is definitely one of them
"I'm of course against ANY lynching, but in this case the only lynching was in the overactive imagination of a lying Leftist."
And other Israelis censor the responses.
Leave your bias at the door. They were escorting a Palestinian family working their lands. Activists do it to prevent violence from settlers, USUALLY the authorities get involved if settlers attack Israeli activists.
THE QUESTION ".....How can one explain the blind eye turned by the policemen present at the site? How can one explain why they didn't know, or didn't think, that their job was to stop the pogrom?........" IS STILL RAISED? IS IT IGNORANCE OR NAIVITY? The Anatot lynching is not the exception as for the settlers; it is the daily experience of numerous Palestinians and occasionally of activists. Myself - I had been there, subjected to a lethal assault by settlers with soldiers serving as indifferent bystanders, that had a clear potential for preventing this comment from ever being offered 8 years later. Still wondering that the police and army are full accomplices of the occupation/settlers ???
Regardless of how one-sided any violence was, this was no lynching. No one was murdered; which is the traditional definition of lynching—as was done to the two IDF reservists who drove into the wrong city some years ago. Just because you're not winning the argument by speaking fairly doesn't give you the right to try and shock people into agreement by making them seem evil.
the Palestinian man who owns the land was brutally attacked and his skull was cracked. 13 people were hospitalised as a result of the lynching. there was intent to kill.
There was no pogrom, there was no lynching. Perhaps finally the settlers you hate so much decided to fight back. You want to disrupt their lives. You want to destroy them and then you'll come after the "settlers" in Haifa, Tel Aviv and Beer Sheva. You come with your Arab friends looking for a fight. And miraculously, Arab photographers working for AP and Reuters always just happen to be there too (though their cameras never seem to work when Jews are being assaulted). And when all else fails, you'll always have the editorial pages of Haaretz on which to sell your nonsense.
They were escorting a Palestinian family to tend THEIR LAND. Foolish man.
Hey putz, these professional Leftist 'activists' are on the ground in Yesha for one purpose only - to provoke the Jewish residents and the IDF/police. The only thing that would make them happier than an imagined pogrom against Arabs would be a real pogrom against Jews.
70 percent of the Anatot settlers are police officers. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=EKzNrNhTu5w
I read it three times and still don't know what the issues were, who the activists were, who the victims were, who the assailants were, what the positions of all groups were, what ignited the violence, and what exactly happened. The story might have merit, but needs a complete rewrite according to basic journalism principles.
in this talkback is quite telling isn't it?
In Israel they are. The police never see crimes committed against them, or Arabs.
Some reported that activists were called "Hellenists" making a connection to Jews who had incorrect "multicultural" views 2200 ago. And who were viciously attacked back then.
Lynching in english means the hanging of a human being. What occurred was completely different and I can only assume that there are other exaggerations in the article.
has been applied to people hung to death extrajudicially from a tree, a current US Supreme Court Justice has described his confirmation as a lynching. The behavior described here, the group assault of one group by another while the police, while present, did not intervene. Is this a lynching? An expanded use of the term. Is it deplorable? Of course. Is it symptomatic of a cultural condition infecting Israelis or settlers who feel entitled? That's for you to judge!
Our job is one of survival through diplomacy , public opinion and the right of the Jewish state . We need to fight our own battles as opposed to each other
Is it that, like state sponsored thugs everywhere, these people are just taking advantage of the situation to steal another inch of land, another building, another tree? Knowing that their political leaders will admonish them in public but punch the air and cheer in private. Or is it a hysterical fear that the zionist dream is finally being seen throughout the world as an aberation of a peoples longing for a homeland? To dream of a home is one thing but to aquire it in the manner in which Israel has cannot but end in tears. Israel has a choice. Support these thugs in everything they do and end up with a country built on shame or sit down with all their neighbours and figure out how they can safely assimilate themselves into the middle east. Israel cannot remain an island, walled in with razor wire, concrete and machine gun towers forever. The founders of Israel escaped from concentration camps to build a better life not to build a better concentration camp.
why is anying in the rest of the world voting to support this terrorist state?
isn't this immanent in the way the jewish state is trying to survive?
Lynching???? Give me a break. Just a tad bit over dramatic.
This is now the third article I have read about the settler mob attack on the group of activists. A lynch is a when a mob attacks and kills an individual whom they have accused of a crime (most often by hanging) without any legal due process. The word is most associated with the hangings of blacks by white mobs in the American south. Just as not all bad people are "Nazis" and not all wars a "Holocaust", it is wrong to misuse such a loaded term whose meaning does not match the action. What happened there was terrible but it was not by any stretch a lynch.
The actions described by the article are more correctly termed a "riot".
Your description reminds me of Missisipi in the deep South in the 1950s/60s, when Jewish activists came to defend the civil rights of black Americans and faced the hatred of the racist rednecks, who were supported by white policemen. My thanks to the people of Ta'ayush and the Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity Movement for continuing the tradition of defending the civil rights of an oppressed people, in this case the Palestinians. If only I could be there with you.
This is proof positive of the evil that is being unleashed in this fledgling nation. Once a population turns upon itself (generally after the savagery against "others" has beed building up for years), the decline into facism has begun. Must have been a frightful experience for the victims involved especially when the police violated their oaths and failed to provide protection. Very reminiscent of 1930's europe. Unfortunately, the solution may be similar given the moral and ethical corruption of the government and institutions of state (such as they are).
You wrote the article as if the residents of Anatot came down to Sheikh Jarrah and chased you away. You wanted a confrontation and you got one. You went as far as camping right next to the gates of Anatot in order to cause the confrontation to happen. Now you have the gall to cry about the residents coming out to push you away from their gates? And to top it off you call it a lynch? By definition a lynch involve a murder. How many of your activists are dead?
Using the term "lynch" for what was actually a small riot is typicle Overstatement of the Facts on the ground by the Left for the purpose of inflaming the situation instead of trying to defuse the situation.
There are no words....... Vile? Inhuman? Evil beyond belief. And all the while the world looks on...but not all, THANK GOD!
there are dopes and dupes. you are one great dupe-
I haven't heard of this solidarity movement but they and those who stand up for the under menschen are saving the reputation of Israel.
Haaretz please do not join the media outlets that don't see fit to report a pogrom of this magnitude so you will not be a partner in the policy, or in the sins of omission.
Yes, compare the government and media response to this, with the response to the mosque burning in the Galil, yesterday. One small point: in English, a lynching ends with killing the victim, usually by hanging them. Please don't use that word - while the event was terrible, it wasn't a lynching. A pogrom does not necessarily imply someone was killed, a lynching does.
i disagree. one speaks frequently of a "media lynching" and yet no one is killed. the meaning is broader than being strung up in a tree and hung
You came and sought them out, they didn't come to you looking to cause a provocation and violence. Are you trying to break into Gaza or half a dozen Arab countries to help Jews reclaim land stolen from them ? No, well then I question your motives.
On Rosh Hashanah, you go and harass Jews who are with their families. After you go there once, you return and this time block their gates. When they come out in anger to clear you out, you claim victimhood. After all, they were just supposed to accept your Rosh Hashana gate-blocking protest quietly. No, wait, not quietly. You were protesting to make noise and get media attention, right? You intended to provoke and have exposure for your story, right? In all the videos your people have shot and broadcast of these incidents, it is very clear that there are a few people from Anatot engaged in fighting, and most of the community members there as well as police, while displaying anger, are attempting to stop the violence. It would be much more respectful of you if after desecrating these Jews' holy day, you didn't then besmirch the memories of lynched Jews and blacks or other groups by using the words "lynch" and "pogrom" to make your case. Never was there a "pogrom" where the so-called victims first blocked a gate on a holy day and then called out the media to capture what the other party does. That's not a pogrom. Likewise for a lynch. The thing is, you could have made your case that this was unwarranted violence had you experienced this violence in a different way - had you not disrupted their Rosh Hashana or blocked access in and out of their community. Had you not made your political demands by waving Palestinian flags to claim that their settlement is illegal or should be Palestinian on a day that is holy to them. But you did. Imagine what you'd be saying if some settlers had gone to a Palestinian town at daytime during Ramadan to protest Palestinian permit-less construction or planting of olive trees on disputed land. Imagine how you'd describe those settlers to the world. Then look in the mirror.
on a Palestinian farmer's land, and left him bleeding profusely from a cracked skull were peaceful families on a picnic? please. revisionism is NOT good.
Kol hakavod to you for putting this incident into context, and for taking to task the leftists who pick a fight and then claim it started when the other party fought back!
You are not alone fighting injustice ! Many people all over the world are with you and pray for you. You are a just and courageous person. Don`t give up ! Peace and good relations between Arabs and Israelis is worth are at the end of the tunnel !!