Teenage suspect in Friday’s mob attempted lynching in police custody, August 19, 2012. (Photo: Olivier Fittousi/Haaretz)
On Friday four Palestinian teenagers were mobbed by 50 Israelis of similar age who were prowling the streets of Jerusalem shouting “Death to Arabs” and “Arabs, Arabs,” looking for Palestinians to beat. Disturbingly, during the Zion Square attack Israeli authorities said around 100 witnesses stood by and watched as one victim, Jamal Julani, was kicked as he laid on the ground unconscious. The violence only stopped after police intervened.
Nir Hasson detailed the assault in Haaretz through quotes from a witness’ Facebook page:
‘When one of the Palestinian youths fell to the floor, the youths continued to hit him in the head, he lost consciousness, his eyes rolled, his angled head twitched, and then those who were kicking him fled and the rest gathered in a circle around, with some still shouting with hate in their eyes.’
‘When two volunteers [from local charities] went into the circle, they tried to perform CPR and the mass of youths standing around started to say resentfully that we are resuscitating an Arab, and when they passed near us and saw that the rest of the volunteers were shocked, they asked why we were so in shock, he is an Arab. When we returned to the area after some time had passed, and the site was marked as a murder scene, and police were there with the cousin of the victim who tried to reenact what happened, two youths stood there who did not understand why we wanted to give a bottle of water to the cousin of the victim who was transferred to hospital in critical condition, he is an Arab, and they don’t need to walk around in the center of the city, and they deserve it, because this way they will finally be afraid,’ she added.
‘Children aged 15-18 are killing a child their own age with their own hands. Really with their own hands. Children who’s hearts were unmoved when they beat to death a boy their age who lay writhing on the floor,’ she wrote.
Haaretz then reported on Sunday the Israel police escalated their initial assessment of a “brawl” to a “lynching.” In addition, four additional suspects, between the ages of 13 and 15, were arrested.
Taxi transporting Palestinian family was firebombed on August, 16, 2012, near Bat Aiyan. (Photo: Israeli Police/Haaretz)
The mob attack came just a day after a firebomb was hurled at a taxi transporting a Palestinian family of six, including two children, and weeks after settlers planted a car bomb in a Palestinian village near Ramallah. The explosions come in the context of the highest rates of settler violence in the past five years, according to a report by the Jerusalem Fund. In 2011 alone, there were 10 “price tag,” arson attacks on Palestinians.
Noting the increase in Jewish Israeli violence against non-Jews, the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) published a fact-sheet linking the attempted lynching to the recent wave of mob violence against African migrants:
In May 2012, a wave of anti-African racism and violence, including physical assaults and a string of arson attacks, hit Tel Aviv and other parts of Israel, fueled by inflammatory statements made about asylum seekers by Israeli politicians including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Interior Minister Eli Yishai.
IMEU’s report, titled “A Culture of Impunity: Violence Against Non-Jews in Israel & the Occupied Territories,” points to an unspoken government acceptance of settler attacks on Palestinians as some of the incitement originated from members of the Israeli Knesset and state-funded rabbinical authorities. Settler rabbi, Dov Lior is described as a patron radical whose:
salary is paid by the Israeli government told a conference that Arabs are ‘wolves,’ ‘savages,’ and ‘evil camel riders.’ Earlier in 2011, he warned Jewish women against marrying non-Jewish women, stating: ‘Gentile sperm leads to barbaric offspring.’
Friday’s mob violence seem to indicate the Israeli hard-right’s incendiary political discourse has paved the way for extremist Jewish violence, all will the tacit support of the state of Israel.
shades of the thirties in nazi germany, only instead of young germans rampaging against jews, this time with jewish israelis out in the streets, looking for, taunting and abusing palestinians and other non-jews – and strictly for the “pleasure” of it!
yet despite these widespread expressions of virulent and lethal racism at the core of israeli society, some jewish americans still choose to believe that zionist israel not only is open and democratic, but that it represents and speaks for world jewry, attempting thereby to implicate all jews in the crimes of the zionists. history will label these holdouts the real antisemites.
“Jewish extremism”? Clearly, you are not keeping up with the Washington Post. As the post noted:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/gate-to-palestinian-home-in-west-bank-set-ablaze-latest-in-spate-of-attacks-on-palestinians/2012/08/21/fa5aaa58-eb56-11e1-866f-60a00f604425_story.html
Attacks on Palestinians, presumed by Jews, kindles debate on state of Israeli values
The mob in Jerusalem shouting “Death to Arabs” is only “presumed” to be Jewish, and the important fact here is that any such attack “kindles debate.” I don’t know why you have to go making accusations about extremism.
Just to clarify- this lynching marks the rise of extremist Jewish civilian violence within Israel itself.
Extremist Jewish settler violence is nothing new.
And extremist Jewish State violence is the operating standard
yourstruly says: “.shades of the thirties in nazi germany, only instead of young germans rampaging against jews, this time with jewish israelis out in the streets, looking for, taunting and abusing palestinians and other non-jews – and strictly for the “pleasure” of it!…”
Israel would be somewhat worse in that respect, actually. In spite of Hiter’s best efforts, Germans didn’t rampage against Jews. The opening Nazi boycott against Jewish businesses fizzled completely, and virtually all the violence on ‘Kristallnacht’ had be carried out by bands of Stormtroopers.
This isn’t to excuse Germans — by and large, they stood by, and they certainly didn’t defend the Jews — but there simply wasn’t much popular participation in the organized violence.
Here, the Jews of Israel have authentically spoken. We can see what they are. Nobody had to orchestrate this.
Where is OlegR, the keyboard warrior who advertises his once-in-a-blue-moon tours of duty to the Gaza-Israel border (only to reappear a day later)?
I distinctly remember Shmuel schooling the Russian colonist on this story and his presumptions.
He immediately stated (without substantiation of course) that this was not a hate crime or a lynching because it was Arab teens versus Jewish teens and that the ‘real’ lynching was perpetrated against Jews elsewhere (something he alluded to, which we are supposed to know or something).
Anyways, as usual, the Zionist clown is wrong and COMMON SENSE prevails.
THIS IS A COLONIAL CONFLICT.
ITS COLONIALISM, STUPID.
I remember saying this to hoppy, to which he replied: ‘no, it’s a land dispute.‘
LOL – as if the Palestinians and the Israelis are arguing over a tree that is growing from the Israeli’s backyard, encroaching into the Palestinian’s backyard.
That is Zionism in a nutshell though – mindnumbingly stupid asinine propaganda and emotionally inane mendacity.
‘The Arabs’ are too fragmented, too corrupt (pawns and dictators and religious fanatics). The Left is too timid to take on the identity politics of the Jewish nationalist extremists in the West (primarily the US and UK). The MSM is following SOP when it comes to Israel, but is more tightly wound because of unique pressures inherent to the Lobby (all coming back to inflicting Holocaust guilt on non-Jews and tar-feather/ostracism tactics of political opponents in the most vindictive/cannibalistic manner).
And a whole other bunch of blah blah blah that we’ve all read up about over the years.
The lead up to the 48′ war, in which we can see a virtually pre-‘defeated’ Palestinian people who were underarmed and undermanned and prey to all kinds of imperial under-the-table dealings is a microcosm for Middle East politics as a whole.
It’s never what it seems on the surface. It’s never poor Israel, surrounded by enemies that hate it simply for existing. Poor Israel in a tough neighborhood. Poor Israel that just wants peace. Pure garbage.