Last Saturday, in the West Bank town of Jalud, a group of Israeli settlers armed with clubs beat, unprovoked, three members of an NBC news team and the Palestinian woman they were interviewing. This kind of violence, David Shulman writes in the Review’s September 24 issue, “is routine in the Palestinian West Bank. About two miles northeast of Jalud, in the town of Qusra, the settlers have been engaged in a monthslong campaign of bloody intimidation:
On July 26 settlers burned down the al-Rahma mosque in the village. Around that time armed settlers brutally attacked Palestinian farmers from the village and the Israeli and international activists who were trying to protect them; several were severely wounded. In March twenty-eight-year-old Amir Moatasem Odeh was killed by a settler; another stabbed his father. A few weeks earlier, on February 27, settlers stormed into Qusra and nearly clubbed to death two activists who are friends of mine; a third activist managed to film the attack. The settler assassins were arrested by the police and as usual released within a few hours. No action has been taken against them. Settlers are above and beyond the law.
And while the attack on the NBC crew has brought international attention to the West Bank, there does not appear to be any significant effort by the Israeli government to put a stop to the settlers’ pogroms. In fact, Shulman contends, the army obeys the settlers: “the orders come from the settlers, though just behind them sits the nefarious prime minister, intent on destruction, and the mindless ministers of his government.”