Opinion | The violence in the West Bank can’t be met with American inaction – By Dean Obeidallah (MSNBC) / Mar 6, 2023
Israel’s finance minister praised the mob violence against Palestinians in Hawara. He isn’t alone in the Israeli government.
Violence in the West Bank is tragically nothing new. I have scores of Palestinian relatives living there who have shared the violence they have seen firsthand — some acts perpetrated by Palestinian militants, others by Israeli soldiers, and a growing number by radical Israeli settlers. But what happened last week in the town of Hawara was unlike anything they had seen before.
A mob of Israeli settlers — estimated by some in the hundreds — descended upon the midsize town chanting “revenge.” Their justification was the death of two settlers who had been appallingly killed by a Palestinian militant. The result was an hourslong rampage.
As the BBC reported, one Palestinian family had to be rescued by paramedics after becoming trapped in their house when settlers laid burning tires outside their front door. Other Palestinians shared how they hid in their house seeking cover from the armed settlers, noting, “The [Israeli] army did nothing to protect us.” When it was over, the terrorists had destroyed countless homes, torched Palestinian stores and a slew of cars, injured approximately 350 Palestinians and killed Sameh Aqtash, a 37-year-old blacksmith who had just returned from volunteering in Turkey for the victims of the earthquakes.
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