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Originally posted by eider
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This is from an article in Vox from January 2023.
https://www.vox.com/world/2023/1/20/...biden-ben-gvir
The human rights defenders and experts in Israeli politics I spoke with emphasized that this government is not a departure from previous ones — indeed, it’s Netanyahu’s sixth time leading the country. Rather, it’s a culmination of Israeli politics drifting farther and farther to the right, and decades longer of policies that amount to de facto annexation of the occupied West Bank, and policies of Jewish supremacy. What’s different now, however, is how clearly these ideas are stated in the new government’s coalition guidelines and by prominent ministers about the fundamentals of how the country runs.
[...]
It was easy to foresee how the coalition would act: The new government’s ministers have made longstanding attacks on LGBTQ communities, religious freedom, Israeli and Palestinian civil society, and who can even call themselves a Jew. Above all, there will be drastic implications for Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank and for civil liberties for Israeli citizens, in large part because Netanyahu’s internal coalition negotiations have brought settlers into key ministerial posts.
“They don’t have a lot of cracks in the coalition that could potentially derail some of the things that they want to do, and they have Netanyahu over a barrel,” says Jeremy Ben Ami, the president of the pro-Israel and pro-peace advocacy group J Street. “They passed a bunch of laws already before they were even sworn in as a government. They rearranged the way in which the occupation is run.”
The human rights defenders and experts in Israeli politics I spoke with emphasized that this government is not a departure from previous ones — indeed, it’s Netanyahu’s sixth time leading the country. Rather, it’s a culmination of Israeli politics drifting farther and farther to the right, and decades longer of policies that amount to de facto annexation of the occupied West Bank, and policies of Jewish supremacy. What’s different now, however, is how clearly these ideas are stated in the new government’s coalition guidelines and by prominent ministers about the fundamentals of how the country runs.
[...]
It was easy to foresee how the coalition would act: The new government’s ministers have made longstanding attacks on LGBTQ communities, religious freedom, Israeli and Palestinian civil society, and who can even call themselves a Jew. Above all, there will be drastic implications for Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank and for civil liberties for Israeli citizens, in large part because Netanyahu’s internal coalition negotiations have brought settlers into key ministerial posts.
“They don’t have a lot of cracks in the coalition that could potentially derail some of the things that they want to do, and they have Netanyahu over a barrel,” says Jeremy Ben Ami, the president of the pro-Israel and pro-peace advocacy group J Street. “They passed a bunch of laws already before they were even sworn in as a government. They rearranged the way in which the occupation is run.”
And recent events in the West Bank bear out their attitude. This from 18 April by Oren Ziv in +972. That he goes on to describe the events as a "pogrom" is telling. It creates a mental image of the massacres of Jews in medieval Europe following the disappearances/murders of Christian children. Or 1930s German police standing by while the SA beat up Jews and smashed Jewish premises.
https://www.972mag.com/pogroms-west-...iers-settlers/
Israeli settlers embarked on a murderous rampage across the occupied West Bank over the weekend, killing at least three Palestinians and destroying property in more than a dozen villages and towns. The immediate trigger for the attacks was the disappearance on Friday, April 12 of Binyamin Ahimeir, a 14-year-old Israeli who went out shepherding that morning from the recently “legalized” Malachei HaShalom (“Angels of Peace”) outpost. By the time Israeli authorities found Ahimeir’s body the following day and declared him a terror victim, the settlers’ rampage through the surrounding Palestinian communities was already in full swing.
According to the human rights group Yesh Din, Israeli settlers attacked 11 Palestinian villages and towns on Saturday alone. They threw stones, set fire to more than 100 vehicles, damaged scores of homes and businesses, and slaughtered hundreds of livestock. In the village of Beitin, near Ramallah, settlers shot dead 17-year-old Omar Hamed. In Al-Mughayyir, slightly further north, 25-year-old Jihad Abu Aliya was killed in circumstances that are still somewhat unclear: settlers were attacking the village at the time, but the Israeli army stated that Abu Aliya was killed by their fire. Another incident captured on a security camera shows Israeli soldiers standing guard while settlers set fire to a car in the town of Deir Dibwan, also near Ramallah.
Israeli settlers embarked on a murderous rampage across the occupied West Bank over the weekend, killing at least three Palestinians and destroying property in more than a dozen villages and towns. The immediate trigger for the attacks was the disappearance on Friday, April 12 of Binyamin Ahimeir, a 14-year-old Israeli who went out shepherding that morning from the recently “legalized” Malachei HaShalom (“Angels of Peace”) outpost. By the time Israeli authorities found Ahimeir’s body the following day and declared him a terror victim, the settlers’ rampage through the surrounding Palestinian communities was already in full swing.
According to the human rights group Yesh Din, Israeli settlers attacked 11 Palestinian villages and towns on Saturday alone. They threw stones, set fire to more than 100 vehicles, damaged scores of homes and businesses, and slaughtered hundreds of livestock. In the village of Beitin, near Ramallah, settlers shot dead 17-year-old Omar Hamed. In Al-Mughayyir, slightly further north, 25-year-old Jihad Abu Aliya was killed in circumstances that are still somewhat unclear: settlers were attacking the village at the time, but the Israeli army stated that Abu Aliya was killed by their fire. Another incident captured on a security camera shows Israeli soldiers standing guard while settlers set fire to a car in the town of Deir Dibwan, also near Ramallah.
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