Senior Israeli Police Officer Brutally Assaulted Activists in Anatot Pogrom

In Hebrew, it’s called a “lynch.”  No, not necessarily stringing a rope over a tree and hanging you.  Closer perhaps in meaning to “pogrom.”  But “lynch” gives you an idea of what it was like for those brave Israeli peace activists who tried to help a poor Palestinian farmer from having his land stolen from him by yet another Israeli settlement.  And that’s what any reasonable Israeli who cares about the mass hooliganism that occurred in the settlement of Anatot is calling it (in Hebrew), a “lynch.”

Now a Rotter member, posting authoritative photographs with specific senior police officers and Israeli victims identified by name, breaks a major story: a senior Israeli police officer played a major role in inciting the violence at Anatot, in which bones were broken, car windows smashed and tires slashed, and a skull was smashed landing the victim in Hadassah Ein Kerem.  I reported yesterday that off-duty police officers who live in Anatot were active participants in the violence.  Today, I’m told by an Israeli source that actually 70% of Anatot’s residents are police officers.  So it’s no wonder that not only was this a settler pogrom, it was a semi-official police pogrom.

There of course will be no investigation of this mayhem since these are police and intelligence officers doing Israel’s dirty work on behalf of its citizens.  As such, they’re given a free hand to do their jobs in whatever way they see fit, even if it involves breaking a few heads in the process.

Chaim Levinson published a shameful piece of pandering in Haaretz that masqueraded as journalism in which he actually published the lies of the settlements security coordinator and director in which they claimed (without a shred of supporting evidence) that peace activists had been the ones provoking the violence.  Levinson had the chutzpah to call this schandeh a mere “confrontation.”

What angered the “residents” of Anatot (read, police and intelligence officers) about this incursion is that they’re used to having carte blanche in carrying out their jobs.  They’re not used to anyone interfering, let alone getting in their face and shouting that they committing a crime or injustice.  That doesn’t sit well with the bull-headed macho, male security goon type in Israel.  So he roars in anger and takes it out on the protestors as happened in Anatot.

Unfortunately, there is no such thing as accountability in Israel when it comes to the police, as I noted above.  They literally get away with murder and it’s only sheer luck that there wasn’t one at Anatot.  There easily could’ve been.

Here is the post translated into English:

Yosef Ben Arush, an investigator with the Judea/Samaria police and resident of Anatot, was photographed assaulting Israeli activists and, according to their claims, participated in a “brutal lynch” against three of them which required hospitalization.  He also smashed the windshields of their vehicles.  It’s reasonable to assume that many of the other “rioting settlers” (as portrayed by the media) were in fact Israeli police and Shin Bet officers who live in Anatot.

According to settlers, the senior police investigator Ben Arush is not known to be a fan of settlements, and the pro-settler advocacy group, Honenu complained about a false  harassment claim he made against a settler of Aley Ayin, whose home was destroyed.  Other settlers report similar acts of harassment and investigations which he initiated.