Palestinians Were Victims of Pogrom in Hebron

by Charles Lenchner · 2008-12-05 18:05:00 UTC
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An eye witness account from Ami Issacharoff reporting from Hebron:

An innocent Palestinian family, numbering close to 20 people. All of them women and children, save for three men. Surrounding them are a few dozen masked Jews seeking to lynch them. A pogrom. This isn't a play on words or a double meaning. It is a pogrom in the worst sense of the word. First the masked men set fire to their laundry in the front yard and then they tried to set fire to one of the rooms in the house. The women cry for help, "Allahu Akhbar." Yet the neighbors are too scared to approach the house, frightened of the security guards from Kiryat Arba who have sealed off the home and who are cursing the journalists who wish to document the events unfolding there.

It gets worse.

The brain requires a minute or two to digest what is taking place. Women and children crying bitterly, their faces giving off an expression of horror, sensing their imminent deaths, begging the journalists to save their lives. Stones land on the roof of the home, the windows and the doors. Flames engulf the southern entrance to the home. The front yard is littered with stones thrown by the masked men. The windows are shattered and the children are frightened. All around, as if they were watching a rock concert, are hundreds of Jewish witnesses, observing the events with great interest, even offering suggestions to the Jewish wayward youth as to the most effective way to harm the family.

Just to be clear: this kind of writing is absolutely not the norm in Haaretz, much less for good old Ami I. Sure, Gidon Levy maybe, but not this guy. And still, millions of tax exempt dollars rain on the Hebron settler community from right wing Orthodox Jews and fanatical Christian Zionist allies. It would be great to see a campaign to make contributions to settler groups illegal, the same way that contributions to Hamas charities are illegal.

B'tselem's amazing video project has footage of a Palestinian house being set alight while dozens of settlers, police and army look on. (Starts around 7:20.)

Charles Lenchner
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