This morning, Beit Ommar farmers arrived at their lands to discover that large areas of grape vines had been attacked by settlers from the illegal settlement of Karmei Tsur. The farmers immediately notified Mahmoud Ahmad Coql, who owns the destroyed fields.
In total, the settlers severed two dunums (two thousand square meters) of Mahmoud’s grape vines in fields near the illegal Karmei Tsur settlement.
Israeli authorities and the Israeli civilian police – upon seeing a number of Palestinians, press, and international activists – soon arrived on the scene accompanied by roughly twenty-five soldiers.
The shock of seeing so much of his work and livelihood destroyed overwhelmed Mahmoud, and he began to struggle for breath and feel chest pains. A Red Crescent Society ambulance arrived and tended to Mahmoud. Meanwhile, the police and soldiers ‘gathered evidence.’
When Mahmoud is ready, he and the other farmers will be taken to the Israeli police station for questioning. The area of Mahmoud’s fields is covered by 24-hour CCTV surveillance from the Karmei Tsur settlement, which will have undoubtedly captured the crimes committed last night.
Such devastating damage to the livelihoods of Beit Ommar farmers is a common occurrence, as Israeli settlers from the five surrounding illegal settlements routinely attack and harass Beit Ommar farmers, and destroy their crops, often wiping out the whole season’s income for a family in one attack.
(Crossposted @ Palestine Solidarity Project. PSP is a Palestinian project dedicated to opposing the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land through non-violent direct action. It was founded in the village of Beit Ommar. It is hosting the We are all Palestine Campaign– Call for International Volunteers 16th September – 3rd October 2011)
my heart goes out to Mahmoud.
The area of Mahmoud’s fields is covered by 24-hour CCTV surveillance from the Karmei Tsur settlement, which will have undoubtedly captured the crimes committed last night.
i’m sure they know who did this. what cruel cruel people. what black hearts they must have.
“what black hearts they must have.”
You’re wrongly assuming they have hearts, Annie. None of that, black or white. Only guns and Torahs.
Settlers must go. For their own good. Not that I care mind you but if they don’t, their safety cannot be guaranteed. They’ve exacted so much pain and misery, abject cruelty, on the indigenous population that payback is going to be a livid bitch. Time to bugger off before it’s too late.
“their safety cannot be guaranteed.”
What a horrible train of thought your statement leads to. Why, it requires us to consider that one kind of Jew would take advantage of the moral, political and social defects or shortcomings of another kind of Jew, but we know that can never happen. After all, we’re a nation!
Yet more pogroms.
Crimes against the very earth. What good could ever come of such deeds?
My uncle has a small plot of grapevines, maybe one dunam, in eastern Oklahoma, and the whole family worked to plant it and works together at harvest time. If some neighbor came and tore them all up, it would be a hideous crime, and the perpetrator would be punished severely (though not severely enough — you simply can’t replace a beloved and hard-worked tract of fertile land with money, jail time, or community service). In this case, the settlers will walk, as always. I won’t even add “probably.” No need anymore. They always do. There are no more superlatives. Every word pales in the face not only of these crimes but the fact that the criminals are protected every time and encouraged to do this again and again and again.
Yes, and I bet the video will clearly show who did this…….and nothing will be done about it.
It really is sad, I hope Mahmoud recovers physically and emotionally as well.
I have one small complaint about this story. It is described as a crime committed by settlers. And the crime will be investigated by Israeli officials. Isn’t it totally obvious that that “Israeli officials” and “settlers” are one and the same. The Israelis have been running a scam on us — settlers bad, Israeli officials good. Let us just accept that these two entities are working together in their goal to annex the West Bank. To accept that they are different is to play into the grand swindle (directed to US audiences only since the rest of the world understands what is going on).
i agree with your view here.. it is a mistake to think the officials are any different.. they are condoning this type of action and it is why it continues unabated… these are some of the many types of events that politicians like obama have to turn a blind eye to as well.. rachel corrie doesn’t exist to the marjority of the political class in the usa… as far as they are concerned, events like this just don’t happen, even when they are caught on camera… and, they buy the israel politicians and officials bullshit regularly…
You are right, ToivoS. I have been thinking for some time about merging my “settlers” and “Israeli forces” categories in the Today in Palestine list – it doesn’t seem that it is any longer possible to separate many of the misdeeds of one group from those of the other. To say nothing of the Israeli government’s official actions.
I can’t get this poor man’s misfortune out of my head – not that that will do him any good. Gratuitous cruelty is really not understandable by normal people – and if there’s a remedy for it outside of locking people up I don’t see it.
where’s eee to point out that these vines were an existential threat? maybe eee is just resting in peace, knowing that one more danger is gone.
The previous post on Beit Ommar, on the PSP site, is about a 2am arrest of three innocents just twenty-four hours earlier.
Israeli Army Raid Beit Ommar, Arrest Three
it makes my blood boil
link to 972mag.com
Commentary on the social efforts of Rabbi Froman to make peace on the ground, including acceptance of friendly Israeli settlers, and condemnation of the price tag and confrontation efforts of the zealot settlers.
That’s not going to matter even slightly until we have a story about one group of settlers who physically prevent another group of settlers from completing a pogrom against Palestinians.
Such actions are systematic. The machine produces them relentlessly. After a certain period of time the hasbara becomes pointless. It takes decades of such behavior to turn a peace treaty into the situation where an embassy is sacked.
“It takes decades of such behavior….”
Yes. And for every day, week, decade this has gone on it makes it harder, impossible for most people, to ever forgive. It hasn’t been for just a few years, it’s been daily for a generation, how many Palestine childen have grown up with this cruelty and oppression? How many Jewish Israeli children have been warped by the Greater Israel cult?
If it ended tomorrow it still wouldn’t be over for a long, long time.
The damage it has done to Israeli Jews will take a similar length of time to heal.