Hate and violence in Hebron

A reminder from the Times Online in the UK that hatred isn't an exclusively Arab or Muslim phenomenon in the Middle East.  

This is just the tip of iceberg.

Hate and violence beget hate and violence.

Time Online Picture Gallery, November 20, 2008

November 20, 2008
Hebron unrest
The settlers pledged to use violence towards Israeli soldiers deployed to evict them, and Palestinian residents. Some desecrated a cemetary in Hebron, causing outrage among locals. The Israeli Army cleaned off the graffiti
(Nayef Hashlamoun/Reuters)

November 20, 2008
Hebron unrest
Soldiers also cleared graffiti from a mosque after settlers scrawled ’Mohammed is a pig’ and ’Death to the Arabs’ on the front
(Hazem Bader/AFP/Getty)

These ugly acts are hardly aberrations, as the disturbing documentary discussed below proves in living color.

The Palestine Video Blog: Israeli Occupation Caught On Tape

An Israeli child from a far-right settler group in the West Bank city of Hebron hurls a stone up the stairs of a Palestinian family close to their settlement and shouts: "I will exterminate you." Another spits towards the same family.

Another settler woman pushes her face up to a window and snarls: "Whore!"

They are shocking images. There is footage of beatings, their aftermath, and the indifference of Israel's security forces to serious human rights abuses. There is footage too of those same security forces humiliating Palestinians – and most seriously – committing abuses themselves.

They are contained in a growing archive of material assembled by the Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem in a remarkable project called Shooting Back.

The group has supplied almost 100 video cameras to vulnerable Palestinian communities in Hebron, the northern West Bank and elsewhere, to document and gather evidence of assaults and abusive behaviour – largely by settlers.

Of course, anyone with a heart and a brain who has paid attention to Palestinian life in these territories already knew vile stuff like this was going on and had been for a long time. That it took such unusual evidence to put this on the agenda in Israel and internationally says volumes about the fragility of Palestinian civil rights (not to mention physical safety) in the Occupied Territories. Mountains of credible reports of such acts from credible Israeli and international observers have been routinely ignored by the authorities and international media, with disciplinary measures generally only being taken when some shocking picture or video makes a splash in the press.

BTW, how about some discussions in the MSM once in blue moon about about Palestinian security? Or is violence against Israelis the only thing that is objected to? Violence by Israelis is, what, just part of life?