Yesterday, a Palestinian gunman killed two Israelis outside the village of Hawara. The murders were in retaliation for Israel’s massive attack on Nablus a few days earlier, in which 11 Palestinians were murdered and the main shopping street was partially destroyed.
After the Hawara killings, hundreds of soldiers and Shin Bet agents swarmed through the village in search of the militant. But when night fell, there was not a soldier in sight. That’s when the Judeo-KKK, wearing not white hoods, but ski masks, massed in the hundreds. They swept through the town burning everything in sight: cars, houses, utility poles. All the while bellowing cries of vengeance. One Palestinian was shot and killed. 100 are injured. A baby was also seriously injured.
Many Israelis are shocked and trying to comprehend the enormity of the tragedy, on Twitter. They’re likening it to a Ukrainian pogrom or Kristallnacht. One called it the triumph of the “Zionist Reich.” One wrote on Facebook: “Welcome to 1933.”
Two brave Israeli reporters, one of them Haaretz’s Josh Breiner, documented the pogrom. He says that for the first time in his career as a journalist, Israelis fired live ammunition directly at him. I’ve confirmed with another Israeli reporter that this gunman, pictured on the right, is wearing an IDF uniform. It’s astonishing that an active-duty soldier would attempt to kill an Israeli reporter. The army and the settlers have joined sides. Something every Israeli activist already knew. But this highlights it in an especially disturbing way.
Of course, Palestinians face this danger every day, still it is hard for a privileged Israeli to think that the Judeo-thugs hate him so much that they’d be just as happy if he were dead than alive.
This is a translation of his eyewitness account:
Never before have they [settlers] fired at me till now: It is sheer madness here in Hawara. IN the shadow of all this, this armed Jews in brown clothing actually fired at me and the Army Radio reporter, Shahar Glick, for no reason. Real live fire. Before that, he fired a stun grenade [at us]. We shouted to him ten times, identifying ourselves [as press]. In reply, he opened fire on us.
What is happening tonight in Harawa is an absolute loss of control by the IDF, which should be controlling the area. Riots, arson, gunfire. It was entirely unprepared for the aftermath of the severe terror attack, which in turn led to the rioting against Palestinians. 2 Jews are murdered and Palestinian homes and vehicles burned amidst cries of vengenace. This is what our “national security” has come to [Itamar Ben Gvir is the national security minister who celebrates such attacks]. This is what “governance” looks like [for Ben Gvir, “governance” is a code word for “law and order,” imposed violently if necessary]. Terrifying.
You’ve certainly asked youselves how many arrestees there were on this night when Jews carried out a pogrom in a Palestinian village, burning houses and cars, pelting journalists with stones during the major riots, all under the nose of the IDF.
And so, as expected, the answer is: no arrestees [Breiner later updated that 6 have been arrested]. You can be sure that there is one minister [Ben Gvir] who didn’t cry at the sight of the flames in Hawara. He promised to be the landlord, no [Ben Gvir says that Arabs will have to get used to the fact that Jews are the “landlord” in Israel]?
So thanks to many good people for their concern. There were those, of course, who hoped it would end differently [that he would be wounded or killed]. Maybe next time. In any event, I am a footnote on this day of madness in which innocent people were murdered. Others lost their hiomes and cars to insane anarchists [the far-right portrays even moderate liberals as “leftist anarchists”] who have nothing in common with Jews.
No one deserves to live like this.
מעולם לא ירו לעברי עד לרגע הזה: יש פה טירוף בחווארה ובצל כל זה החמוש היהודי עם הבגד הכהה הזה פשוט ירה לעברי ולעבר כתב גל”צ שחר גליק בלי סיבה. ירי ממש. קודם לכן זרק לעברנו רימון הלם. צועקים לו עשר פעמים, מזדהים, והוא פשוט פותח לעברנו באש.
לפי הצבא, לא מדובר באנשי שב”כ. pic.twitter.com/F2nWPuar0n
— Josh Breiner (@JoshBreiner) February 26, 2023
Breiner’s original tweets follow:
מה שקורה הערב בחווארה זה אובדן שליטה מוחלט של צה”ל, הריבון בשטח. התפרעויות, הצתות, ירי. היערכות חסר לאחר הפיגוע הקשה מובילה להתפרעויות כנגד פלסטינים.
2 נרצחים יהודים, בתים וכלי רכב פלסטינים שהוצתו וקריאות נקם. ככה נראה הביטחון הלאומי שלנו וככה נראית “המשילות”.
נורא. pic.twitter.com/468Hu9BbbX— Josh Breiner (@JoshBreiner) February 26, 2023
כמו כן, תודה לרבים וטובים על הדאגה.
היו כמובן גם אחרים שקיוו שייגמר אחרת, אולי בפעם הבאה.
ובכל מקרה, אני הערת שוליים ביום המטורף הזה שבו אנשים חפים מפשע נרצחו, אחרים איבדו את בתיהם ורכושם לאנרכיסטים מטורפים שאין בינם לבין יהדות כלום.
לאף אחד לא מגיע לחיות ככה.— Josh Breiner (@JoshBreiner) February 26, 2023
Gaza journalist, Muhammad Shehada’s reporting offers a detailed account of the extent of the devastation:
2\ #Israeli settlers burned down 100 cars in Huwara & 75 homes (35 completely & 40 partially).
They wounded over a 100 Palestinians, stabbed a child (in critical condition) & shot dead an aid worker.
The Israeli gov is calling this terrorism “taking the law into their hands” pic.twitter.com/tWbNXH5upw
— Muhammad Shehada (@muhammadshehad2) February 26, 2023
It is absolutely ghoulish for Bibi Netanyahu to ask settlers “not to take the law into their own hands.” What does he take us for? Fools? Settlers aren’t listening to him. He is irrelevant. They already took the law, and much else, into their hands. In fact, there is no law. The settlers rule and no one stands in their way. The army actually facilitated the entrance of the settlers to the village leaving the road completely open instead of blocking it.
This tweet from Israeli journalist, Edo Konrad, notes that former Judeo-terrorist (and now senior government minister) Bezalel Smotrich, liked a tweet calling for the “erasure” (i.e. genocide) against Hawara:
Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance min. and one of the most powerful members of the gov’t, likes a tweet by Samaria Regional Council Deputy Chief Davidi Ben-Zion, in which he calls for the village of Huwara “to be erased.” That’s called support for genocide and ethnic cleansing. https://t.co/Xvrkm5KKLS
— Edo Konrad (@edokonrad) February 26, 2023
Translation:
The village of Hawara must be erased today. Enough with statements about building and strengthening settlements. The deterrence we’ve lost must be regained immediately, with no place for mercy.
Fania Oz-Sulzberger, daughter of the late Israeli novelist, Amos Oz, likened the settler attack to a Cossack pogrom. She invoked the name of the leader of the thuggery, Bogdan Chmielnitski, responsible for the murders of tens of thousands of Jews.
פורעים יהודים שורפים בתים בחווארה כמיטב מסורת חמלניצקי. אדם נפצע קשה, משפחות חולצו, יש עשרות נפגעי שאיפת עשן. גדוד מילואים הוקפץ למקום ״להרגיע את הרוחות״. לחבק את הפוגרומצ׳יקים וללטף את ראשם?
מעניין מה עובר למילואימניקים האלה בראש עכשיו.— Fania Oz-Salzberger פניה עוז-זלצברגר (@faniaoz) February 26, 2023
Translation:
Jewish thugs burning down homes in Hawara in the finest tradition of [Bogdan] Chmielnicki. One person critically wounded, families rescued from burning buildings, scores suffering from tear gas inhalation. An army reserve unit quickly mobilized and sent “to bring calm.” What? To embrace the pogromniks and stroke their heads?
We Jews have suffered our share of pogroms: the Romans burned our rabbis at the stake; the Spaniards tortured us on the rack; Hitler gassed us in the extermination camps. “In every generation they rose up to destroy us.” Despite their massive power and the millions of Jewish victims–still, we survived. Till today. Now we, or thugs purporting to be Jews, have become the murderers.
״יש פה משהו מאוד מרגש.. יהודים לא שותקים. מה שהצבא לא מסוגל לעשות, מה שהמשטרה לא תעשה בחיים באים יהודים פשוטים ועושים מעשה טבעי של נקמה. מציתים מכל הבא ליד״
***🤦
אתה יודע שמחשבה כזו יכולה להיות גם לצד השני.
מה יהיה אם כל אחד יקח את החוק לידיים?🤦 pic.twitter.com/tSFKyz6v3J— Asslan Khalil (@KhalilAsslan) February 26, 2023
Here is video testimony by a Hilltop Youth terrorist confirming what I wrote above. Translation:
Hi. We are here at a Hilltop Youth operation. I’m tearing from the tear gas fired by the army and police in order to break up the demonstration. It was crazy. Everything has gone up in smoke, fires everywhere. Here there is something impressive. Jews refusing to be silent. What the IDF is not prepared to do, what the police has never done–simple Jews doing a perfectly resonable and natural act of vengeance. Burning everything possible.
This isn’t Josh Breiner in the picture.
@ Not: Josh was with Shai GLick of Galey Tzahal. So its a picture of him taken by Breiner.
Hey Richard,
I am curious to know whether you think that the attack on the two Israelis that preceded the pogrom were justified in any sense. Or rather, under which circumstances would you consider them justified and in which would you consider them reprehensible?
I ask because I see a lot of people claiming that these civilians are innocent and that their status as settlers is irrelevant. Thanks.
@ Sadikov: I’ve answered your question a number of times here and on Twitter. Before asking questions about my views, pls search through posts or tweets relating to such incidents. I hate having to repeat myself endlessly. In short, it doesn’t matter what I support or oppose. It’s not my decision to tell Palestinians how they should resist Israeli mass murder (which the murders of the settlers was a direct response to). That is their decision. I respect decisions they make which are proportional to the violence and murder inflicted on them. As Malcom said: by any means necessary.
Also, I will not criticize a people or a resistance that faces 20 of its own dead for every israeli killed by a Palestinian.
Further, I don’t care what “a lot of people claim.” I don’t even know what that statement means. How many is “a lot” and who are these alleged people? Those are rhetorical questions and don’t answer them.
Settlers are not civilians. These settlers in particular were not because they are from Har Bracha, a settlement sitting on land confiscated illegally from the Palestinian village, Burin. There are reports that the victims were members of the Hilltop Youth. I am researching this claim. If so, they were terrorists and certainly not civilians. But even if they were settlers, but not members of Hilltop Youth, they are direct accessories to Israeli state terror and land theft.
I would have no problem with them living there under Palestinian sovereignty and subject to Palestinian laws. But they would never agree to this. Which again makes them anything but civilians.
Before commenting read the text above the comment box. Do not publish the same comment twice. And publish only a single comment in any thread. That means you’ve published your single comment in this thread.
The State must have a monopoly on violence. A State that allows citizenry to run wild is weak.
A shame on Israel.
@ Jay: A state should not need mass murder as state policy. But I appreciate the rest of yr tweet.
Avi Maoz, chairman of the far-right Noam party, announced his resignation as a deputy minister, but said he would stay on as a coalition member.
Hey Richard,
thank you for the reply. I was genuinely interested in your views as I am wary of writing something similiar on social media and sounding without tact. I don’t use twitter so it must have been another user. Thank you for taking the time again.
Best regards
@ Sadikov: I apologize if you were expressing genuine interest and not engaging in feigned naivete. I interpreted your comment to be in the same vein as other similarly phrased comments published here which profess innocent interest in my views, but which conceal provocation.
You would think that Israel would be mindful of the fact that this is happening at the worst possible moment for them. When the US and the rest of the world is laser focused on Russia’s war in Ukraine and a potential invasion of Taiwan by China, a third intifada is not something that the US is going to be able to do much, if anything, to diffuse. This is especially the case if Mahmoud Abbas dies in the near future and a power struggle ensues that leads to the Bantustan Authority’s collapse. Couple this with Iran seeing it as a way to distract Israel from illegally bombing their nuclear program, which Netanyahu has been very public in expressing his desire to do, and you have a recipe for disaster.
Just a rectification: Mohammad Shehada is from Gaza.
@ Deir Yassin 1948: Thanks for the correction. Again. YOu should be my proof reader! He’s a great reporter.
He is ! And he’s fluently in French too. He used to study in France.
Richard said:
“The murders were in retaliation for Israel’s massive attack on Nablus a few days earlier, in which 11 Palestinians were murdered and the main shopping street was partially destroyed.”
Richard. No less than 3 of the 11 dead Palestinians were armed, wanted terrorists who’d been shooting at Israelis for two weeks. Is the IDF to blame that the terrorists went to ground in a souk?
@ Pamela: Yes, definitely the IDF is guilty of war crimes in this attack and hundreds of others. Murdering 3 wanted Palestinians does not justify committing a war crime against an entire city. Murdering 11 people 8 of whom were unarmed civilians is a war crime. It doesn’t matter what other cirucmstances were involved. THe murders and resulting ravaging of the city stand on their own as acts of terrorism against a civlian population.
There’s no doubt that in a large scale operation, war crimes become increasingly likely.
BTW, Richard, your numbers are off, insofar as ,”The Palestinian Center for Human Rights said that at least three of those killed were civilians, including the teenager and Abdelaziz Ashqar, who were shot in front of a medical clinic.” So five or your eight ‘civilians’ were actually combatants.
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israel-kills-11-daytime-raid-nablus
https://www.timesofisrael.com/5-palestinians-said-killed-in-nablus-amid-clashes-between-gunmen-israeli-forces/
@ Punch: Look this is just semantics. I have no interest in semantics. If there was one civilian or 20; if there was one militant or 30, Palestinians are fighting to defend their homes and towns and have every right to do so. Israel is both occupier and invader under international law. It has no right to be in these towns. These murders are war crimes. And God willing, there will be accountability and every IDF chief of staff who committed them or approved them will go to the Hague. If I could clap them in leg irons, I would.
Since you are the third hasbaroid to try to argue about how many Palestinian militants are dancing on the head of a pin, be warned all three of you, I will likely delete such comments in future.