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| Huwara after an extremist settler 'revenge' pogrom (Jerusalem Post) |
But some optics can be avoided. I have often expressed my dismay and disapproval of makeshift settlements in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) near Palestinian villages. First because it endangers the lives of those settlers and the lives of their families. And also because it endangers the rest of the Israeli people by inciting people that believe that it’s a ‘Mitzvah’ to kill Jews – motivating them to actually do it much more often than they already are.
But an important reason relevant to the situation now is the optics of the more violent settler types that have perpetrated revenge attacks against Palestinian innocents. There have clearly been such cases. Such as the one earlier this year in Huwara when hundreds of extremist settlers went on a violent rampage leaving one Palestinian dead and hundreds more injured. And setting the town ablaze.
The result of something like that creates the false image of Jews as vigilantes that have no restraint against committing violence against innocent Palestinians. An image that results in things like the following - as reported by VIN:
The Biden administration is blocking a shipment of more than 27,000 U.S.-made rifles for the Israel Police out of fear they could make their way into the hands of “extremist Israeli settlers,” U.S. officials said...
Three cases of firearms, including M-16 and M-4 rifles, have been waiting for the State Department’s required approval and notification to Congress for more than a month, according to The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.
Now it might very well be true that in a lot of these cases, settlers that shoot and kill a neighboring Palestinian is a matter of their own self defense. Especially now where Arab anger against - and hatred of - Jews is at its peak. As was suggested by VIN:
Many Israeli towns and villages, particularly in Judea and Samaria, have armed volunteer defense forces, or security squads, called “kitot konenut.” Armed and trained by the state, and comprising mostly civilian military or law-enforcement veterans, their purpose is to act as a first-response force in cases of terrorist infiltration.
Denying them the M-16 and M-4 rifles does expose them and their families to the sure Palestinian violence and possible death that this war can and has generated. And there can be no better or easier target for them than their neighboring Israeli settlers.
Settler violence can and should be avoided. First because they aren’t just optics - they are grossly immoral. But second because it actually hurts our image as a moral people when Jews are seen as vigilantes that don’t care about human life.
The pogrom in Huwara and other revenge attacks makes it far more likely to see settlers as indiscriminate extremists out to harass Palestinians for purposes of forcing them to leave so they can take over their land. Which is their stated eventual goal.
The best way to avoid those optics is for the government of Israel to tear down those makeshift settlements and force its inhabitants to leave. And to arrest them if they resist.
There is another situation where negative optics could have been avoided. Where some soldiers in the West Bank city of Jenin ‘defiled’ some captured mosques and recited Shema in them. This is no different than a group of White Supremacists storming a Shul in Boro Park and worshiping their god there!
I agree with the Sephardi Chief Rabbi. As reported by VIN:
Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel, wrote a letter to Rabbi Eyal Karim, the Chief Rabbi of the IDF, warning against allowing behavior such as was seen when a group of IDF soldiers used the loudspeakers in one of the mosques in the city of Jenin for the “Shema” prayer, after a broad operation against terrorists took place there in recent days…
“It is clear that everything that is not directly related to the combat should not be used as a provocation, religious matters in particular.”
“And it must be explained to those soldiers that the religious feelings of members of other religions should not be harmed for any number of reasons that the IDF is against such actions,” he added.
“The people of Israel are the chosen people and do not act like those murderers who mercilessly massacred, looted, corrupted, and desecrated everything that is holy and dear to us. Therefore, we must exercise extra caution and avoid actions that are not useful for the fighting and will cause damage to the nation of Israel and its image in the world,” the Chief Rabbi stated.
To be absolutely clear (again) I have no love lost for a people that glorifies Hamas People that rejoice over what Hamas did to us on October 7th. People that prefer Hamas lead them over the PA. People who want to see us dead. But that doesn’t mean we can dismiss the optics of gun toting settlers shooting at Palestinians whether justified or not.
Bottom line is that it’s hard enough trying to explain all those civilian casualties of war. What Israel does not need is to explain why settlers are shooting at Palestinians on the West Bank as a matter of self defense. Self defense is a difficult ‘sell’ because of pogroms like the one in Huwara. A sell that wouldn’t be needed if they weren’t there in the first place.
This is why I agree with the Sephardi Chief Rabbi. To repeat what he said;
“The people of Israel are the chosen people and do not act like those murderers who mercilessly massacred, looted, corrupted, and desecrated everything that is holy and dear to us. Therefore, we must exercise extra caution and avoid actions that are not useful for the fighting and will cause damage to the nation of Israel and its image in the world,”
