The Existential Threat of Settler Violence
The ‘price tag’ and actual attacks are putting Israel in danger
October 06, 2011
The burned mosque earlier this week.(Menahem Kahana/AFP/Getty Images)
Last week, a group of Israeli peace activists made their way to Anatot, a settlement northeast of Jerusalem. They were there to accompany Yasin Abu Saleh el-Rifai, a Palestinian farmer whose land had been seized. Some of them were holding Palestinian flags. A group of Anatot’s residents came out, threw punches, spat out some crass words. Later that evening, the activists returned to Anatot to protest. The settlers came out en masse, with knives and rocks and clenched fists.
You can watch what happened next on the video below. You can read about the same ideological milieu, Israel’s burgeoning and beastly rabid right, torching a mosque in northern Israel earlier this week, vandalizing the home of a well-known peace activist in Jerusalem, even infiltrating an Israel Defense Forces base and destroying vehicles and equipment to protest the army’s demolition of three illegally built houses in the Migron outpost.
The violence is epidemic. And it’s only going to get worse. There is no greater threat to Israel’s security.
WATCH: New Video of Settler Attack in Anatot Released [972+]
Earlier: A Mosque Is Burned, This Time in Israel
Liel Leibovitz is editor-at-large for Tablet Magazine and a host of its weekly culture podcast Unorthodox and daily Talmud podcast Take One. He is the editor of Zionism: The Tablet Guide.
