Ten days ago we picked up a Maan news agency story that settlers had set fire to a Palestinian farmer’s sheep in the Occupied West Bank, killing a dozen of them. Subsequently, Haaretz ran a story saying that police were skeptical about the farmer’s claim, because the burnings happened on a Saturday, when settlers don’t drive; and Seham picked it up in her digest of news from Today in Palestine that we run.
Now Henry Norr and an anonymous correspondent have pointed us to a followup story from Arutz Sheva, the settler news service, saying the story is a hoax. The rightwing site says:
[Shepherd] Fadel finally admitted to police the whole story was a lie and that he was responsible for the fire, which he set to burn thorns before it spread beyond control. Blaming Jews not only would have saved him from the embarrassment of having burned his own sheep, it also would allow him to claim damages from the government while being hailed as a hero among Palestinian Authority Arabs and left-wing anti-Zionists.
I’ll post more on this when there’s definitive information. I’m more than happy to eat crow on this, but I want some documentation…
