Latest news with #settlerterrorism
France 24
2 days ago
- Politics
- France 24
Israeli settlers attack West Bank Christian village
Jeries Azar, a Taybeh resident and journalist for Palestine TV, told AFP his house and car were targeted in the pre-dawn assault. "I looked outside and saw my car on fire, and they were throwing something at the vehicle and in the direction of the house," Azar said. The Palestinian Authority issued a statement blaming "Israeli colonial settlers" for the attack on Taybeh. Azar said he was terrified and put himself in the shoes of the Dawabsheh family, a couple who burned to death with their baby after settlers attacked their West Bank village of Duma in 2015. "My greatest fear was for my two-year-old son. After we escaped, he cried nonstop for an hour", Azar said, adding that the Israeli army had surveyed the area after the attack. Israeli police and the military said in a joint statement that a unit was dispatched to Taybeh and reported "two burned Palestinian vehicles and graffiti". The statement said that no suspects were apprehended but that Israeli police have launched an investigation. A photo shared by a Palestinian government agency on social media showed graffiti on a Taybeh wall that read: "Al-Mughayyir, you will regret", referring to a nearby village that was also attacked by settlers earlier this year. The Palestinian Authority's foreign ministry condemned the attack, calling it "settler terrorism". Germany's ambassador to Israel, Steffen Seibert, also condemned the action, writing on X: "These extremist settlers may claim that God gave them the land. But they are nothing but criminals abhorrent to any faith". Taybeh and its surroundings have experienced several bouts of settler violence in recent months, including an arson attack at an ancient Byzantine church. The village -- home to about 1,300 mostly Christian Palestinians, many holding US dual citizenship -- is known for its brewery, the oldest in the Palestinian territories. Settlers have attacked neighbouring communities in recent months, resulting in three deaths, damage to Palestinian water wells and the displacement of at least one rural herding community. Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967. The territory is home to about three million Palestinians and around 700,000 Israeli settlers, including about 200,000 in east Jerusalem. Last week, 71 members of Israel's 120-seat parliament, or Knesset, passed a motion calling on the government to annex the West Bank.
Al Bawaba
25-06-2025
- Politics
- Al Bawaba
Israeli settler rampage kills 3 in West Bank as bombardment of Gaza claims dozens of lives
ALBAWABA- Israeli settlers, backed by occupation forces, launched violent and coordinated attacks on the Palestinian village of Kafr Malik, northeast of Ramallah, setting fire to homes, vehicles, and private property in a renewed wave of settler terrorism across the occupied West Bank. Armed settlers, under military protection, stormed the village while Israeli soldiers opened live fire directly at Palestinians, killing at least three and injuring seven others. Breaking | Israeli settlers set Palestinian property, including residential homes and vehicles, on fire during their attack on the Kafr Malik village northeast of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. — Quds News Network (@QudsNen) June 25, 2025 Palestinian ambulances attempting to evacuate the wounded were reportedly blocked by Israeli forces, deepening the humanitarian toll of the assault. Also Read Trump: Iran's conflict with Israel may reignite soon The attack is part of a growing pattern of systematic, ethnically driven violence carried out by settlers with tacit or open support from far-right Israeli ministers such as Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, both of whom have publicly advocated for forced displacement and the expansion of Israeli annexation in the West Bank. Elsewhere in the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces continued the demolition of homes and infrastructure in the Nour Shams refugee camp in Tulkarm, displacing more families amid rising tensions. Meanwhile, in the Gaza Strip, Israeli air and artillery strikes escalated, killing at least eight Palestinians, including women and children. A residential building in the Al-Shujaiya neighborhood east of Gaza City was bombed, and additional strikes hit the Al-Shati refugee camp to the west and areas near Al-Katiba in Khan Younis, south of the Strip.
Irish Times
18-05-2025
- Politics
- Irish Times
‘Settler terrorism is a daily thing': a Jewish Russian activist who emigrated to Israel
When we meet at a cafe in Tel Aviv, Andrey Khrzhanovsky (26) has an injured shoulder from when he was hit by the barrel of an M-16 rifle a few weeks earlier. The Jewish Russian activist and journalist says he was attacked, along with two Palestinians, by a settler in Al-Farsiya in the occupied West Bank – 'what is being missed in the media is that settler terrorism is a daily thing', he says. From St Petersburg, Khrzhanovsky was visiting his grandparents, who had emigrated to Israel years earlier, in February 2022 when he woke up to the news that Russia had started bombing Ukraine – 'I made an immediate decision that I can't go back there.' Along with tens of thousands of Ukranians, Belarusians and other Russians with at least one Jewish grandparent , he applied for Israeli citizenship. In total, about 220,000 people of Jewish ancestry have emigrated to Israel from former Soviet states since Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. According to Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics, 1.3 million Russian-speakers account for about 15 per cent of Israeli citizens, the majority of whom arrived after the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the subsequent economic turmoil in Russia. READ MORE The post-Soviet wave of migration significantly enlarged Israel's right-wing voting bloc , which has dominated recent Israeli elections. In contrast, the mostly young, educated Russians who have emigrated since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 tend to identify as left-wing or centrist, according to polling on Russian wartime migration by Outrush , a research project on Russian emigration. The polling found that 75 per cent of the post-2022 immigrants viewed themselves as political and civil activists. Andrey X is an independent Russian Israeli journalist and activist working in the occupied West Bank. Photograph: Hannah McCarthy When he became an Israeli citizen in 2022, Khrzhanovsky says he had only a 'surface level' understanding of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Russian language media in Israel is skewed heavily to the right and widely read via social media, with right-wing Russian-speaking influencers playing an outsize role in shaping the views of Russians and Ukrainians in Israel. Khrzhanovsky's activism in the West Bank began after a first-hand encounter that year with a settler attack in the South Hebron Hills . He subsequently launched a project to bring newly arrived Russian-speaking immigrants to the West Bank to educate them on the Israeli occupation, and at the end of 2023, along with some fellow Russian-Israelis, launched Kompass Media to provide Russian-language reporting on Israel's occupation of the West Bank and war in Gaza . Relatively small numbers of newly arrived Russian and Ukrainian immigrants have moved to settlements in the occupied West Bank such as Ariel. Khrzhanovsky says that, in general, Russian and Ukrainian immigrants living in settlements are driven more by the availability of cheaper housing in the West Bank, rather than ideological or religious reasons, although the attack led by Hamas on October 7th, 2023, has hardened views towards Palestinians. Residents of Khirbet Zanuta in the West Bank who were forced to leave at the end of October 2023 due to settler violence. Photograph: Hannah McCarthy Data from before October 7th from the Viterbi Family Center, an Israeli research and polling institute, indicates that only 4 per cent of the post-2022 immigrants to Israel believe Jewish citizens should have more rights than non-Jewish citizens, compared with 43 per cent of Jewish Israelis in general. Some 53 per cent of new immigrants believed that Palestinian citizens of Israel are discriminated against, compared with only 31 per cent of Jewish Israelis who thought the same. Having amassed a large online following under the name Andrey X , Khrzhanovsky's time is now spent producing a documentary about Ras al-A'uja , a Palestinian hamlet in the West Bank under threat from settlers attacking their water supply and livestock. 'I started essentially as a protective presence activist and filmed everything because when settlers or soldiers are being filmed they're much less aggressive,' he says. However, 'Sometimes they're being filmed and they will still attack you,' he adds. Khrzhanovsky says he is motivated by 'a deep belief that knowledge and education and freedom of information is the foundation of change'. He believes that the Israeli occupation in the West Bank will not end without international pressure and sanctions that reduce funding for the Israeli government – 'and that can only happen if the international public is informed'. Like many independent journalists, Khrzhanovsky's work is supported by online subscribers via his Patreon account, which has allowed him to maintain an apartment in Israel, as well as hire a film crew and security while they are working in the West Bank. In December 2022, Khrzhanovsky was arrested for several days after posting a video placing a 'Free Palestine' sticker on a memorial to an Israeli soldier in Sderot, near the Gaza border. He says he was beaten and denied food and water before eventually being released on bail – 'if I was a Palestinian I would be in jail now'. More recently, Shimon Atia, a settler in the West Bank, has sued Khrzhanovsky for more than €40,000, alleging defamation. Khrzhanovsky says he faces 13 lawsuits, with Israel's minister of housing and construction, Yitzhak Goldknopf saying that his actions 'constitute a blatant violation of the law and public order in the State of Israel'. 'All of the cases will be heard in Israeli courts, since I'm an Israeli citizen,' says Khrzhanovsky, 'as opposed to Palestinians, who would be tried in military courts, even when we do the exact same stuff and live in the exact same place.' Khrzhanovsky says he supports a one-state solution for Israel-Palestine without special privileges for Jewish people. When questioned on how that aligns with his own personal benefit of Israeli citizenship he says: 'I benefit from a lot of things. I benefit from the patriarchy, for instance, but I don't think that that's a good reason to defend it.'
