What Will They Label This?

Why Israeli settlers are lashing out

 

Rights groups report a sharp increase of attacks by West Bank settlers on Palestinians, as well as rising right-wing violence against left-leaning Israelis.

 

Jerusalem – When Yaron Ezrahi was a young political science professor in 1983, his star student was Emil Grunzweig, who had just completed his thesis on free speech.

Two days later, Mr. Grunzweig was killed at a peace rally here, when a right-wing activist threw a hand grenade into a crowd of people demonstrating against Israel’s involvement in the war in Lebanon.

Today, Dr. Ezrahi sees a resurgence of the same blend of violence and lawlessness that took the life of his favorite student 25 years ago. His alarm stems from a pipe-bomb attack last week outside the home of Zeev Sternhell, a colleague to whom he is personally and ideologically quite close.

Professor Sternhell, who has been a prominent and outspoken critic of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and is active in the organization Peace Now, was lightly injured in the attack. Near his Jerusalem home, police found posters offering a 1 million shekel reward [close to $300,000] to anyone killing a member of Peace Now, which opposes Jewish settlement in the land seized in the 1967 Six-Day War.

To Ezrahi, there is a clear connection between an upsurge in violence perpetrated by settlers against Palestinians in the territories, particularly in the northern West Bank, and the reemergence of Israeli-on-Israeli acts of violence inside the Green Line, Israel’s pre-1967 borders.

It doesn’t matter how many wrongs you add up, they will never make a right.

In a report last month, Btselem, an Israeli human rights organization, reported that it was looking into at least five violent settler attacks on Palestinians that occurred between July 29 and Aug. 4. “These cases reflect a sharp increase in reports of such violence, and represent a peak to an escalation that has been under way over the past few weeks,” the group said.

“We’re at a turning point of great significance,” Ezrahi says. “What happened in the occupied territories was a growth of a culture of illegalism, and when this culture is allowed to flourish for a long time, violence enters and people think they will be invincible to any repercussions from the apparatus of the state.”

This then, if it can be said that anything is more unfortunate than the acts themselves, is the truly unfortunate part of the situation – Palestinians, because of the actions of their extremists, have been demonized to the point that a great many people see them all in the same light, and violence against them is all too often written off.

The indignities the many are forced to suffer daily as a result of the actions of some are deemed, by civilized society, as both justified and justifiable. There exists the possibility that Israeli extremist on Israeli violence over the Palestinian issue may be dealt with differently – time will tell.

The other question to be asked is, “what is a pipe-bomb attack to be considered if tossed at one Israeli by another”? What is a bounty placed on the heads of members of an Israeli organization by Israeli extremists?

In other places, or with other cultures, these acts would be labeled as terrorism – what will it be labeled here?