Israelis set West Bank mosque on fire, as UN report reveals rise in settler violence
Al-Akhbar | January 15, 2014
A group of Israeli settlers set fire to a West Bank mosque and sprayed it with racist graffiti, Ma’an news agency reported on Wednesday.
The “price tag” attack comes as a United Nations report revealed that settler attacks on Palestinians have almost quadrupled in eight years.
Ayoub Abu Hijlah, the mayor of the northern village of Deir Istiya, told Ma’an that the settlers entered the village before dawn to set fire to the mosque’s door, causing minor damages.
The settlers also scrawled threatening graffiti on the walls of the mosque, including “Arabs out!” and “Best regards from Qusra,” in an allusion to an incident in early January in which a group of settlers was apprehended by Palestinian villagers as they intended to destroy their crops.
Another tag read: “The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance: He shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked.”
Palestinian Authority official Ghassan Daghlas said that residents managed to extinguish the blaze before it spread to the interior of the mosque.
Most price tag attacks against Palestinians are never prosecuted, and many take place in full view of Israeli troops. According to rights organization Yesh Din, indictments were only filed in 8.5 percent of 825 completed police investigations it monitored.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) report, relayed by the Associated Press, recorded 2,100 settler attacks since 2006, from 115 attacks that year to 399 in 2013.
OCHA figures estimated that in eight years, 10 Palestinians were killed by settlers, and more than 1,700 Palestinians were injured by settlers or by troops in clashes.
Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are illegal under international law.
Israeli soldiers rough up EU diplomat, confiscate aid supplies for Palestinians
Al-Akhbar | September 20, 2013
Israeli soldiers manhandled European diplomats on Friday and seized a truck full of tents and emergency aid they had been trying to deliver to Palestinians whose homes were demolished this week.
A Reuters reporter saw soldiers throw sound grenades at a group of diplomats, aid workers and locals in the occupied West Bank, and yank a French diplomat out of the truck before driving away with its contents.
“They dragged me out of the truck and forced me to the ground with no regard for my diplomatic immunity,” French diplomat Marion Castaing said.
“This is how international law is being respected here,” she said, covered with dust.
The Israeli army and police declined to comment.
Locals said Khirbet al-Makhul was home to about 120 people. The army demolished their houses, stables and a kindergarten on Monday after Israel’s high court ruled that they did not have proper building permits.
Despite losing their property, the inhabitants have refused to leave the land, where they say their families have lived for generations along with their flocks of sheep.
Israeli soldiers stopped the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) delivering emergency aid on Tuesday and on Wednesday IRCS staff managed to put up some tents but the army forced them to take the shelters down.
Diplomats from France, Britain, Spain, Ireland, Australia and the European Union’s political office, turned up on Friday with more supplies. As soon as they arrived, about a dozen Israeli army jeeps converged on them, and soldiers told them not to unload their truck.
“It’s shocking and outrageous. We will report these actions to our governments,” said one EU diplomat, who declined to be named because he did not have authorization to talk to the media.
“(Our presence here) is a clear matter of international humanitarian law. By the Geneva Convention, an occupying power needs to see to the needs of people under occupation. These people aren’t being protected,” he said.
In scuffles between soldiers and locals, several villagers were detained and an elderly Palestinian man fainted and was taken for medical treatment.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a statement that Makhul was the third Bedouin community to be demolished by the Israelis in the West Bank and adjacent Jerusalem municipality since August.
Palestinians have accused the Israeli authorities of progressively taking their historical grazing lands, either earmarking it for military use or handing it over to the Israelis whose settlements dot the West Bank.
Israeli forces regularly demolish Palestinian homes, claiming they do not have the proper construction permits. However, the Israeli government regularly announces the expansion of settlements, which are considered illegal under international law.
Israelis and Palestinians resumed direct peace talks last month after a three-year hiatus. Palestinian officials have expressed serious doubts about the prospects of a breakthrough.
“What the Israelis are doing is not helpful to the negotiations. Under any circumstances, talks or not, they’re obligated to respect international law,” the unnamed EU diplomat said.
(Reuters, Al-Akhbar)
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Book Review
Truth Lost, Truth Found
A Review of “Finding Treblinka” by Caroline Sturdy Colls
By David Skrbina • Unz Review • July 30, 2026
Long ago, there was a small place in the Polish countryside where, it was said, up to 1 million human beings met their demise over the course of some 10 months. This small place, comprising only around 50 acres of land, was located about 1.5 miles from the small village of Treblinka (population circa 300). At this remote location, a handful of Germans built a facility in 1942—a transit camp, they called it—intended to temporarily house people undesirable to the German state, to disinfest them of dangerous disease-bearing pests, and then to ship them onward to various locations distant from that state; some of these people died in the camp, some would later be put to forced labor, and others would be simply released in far-flung regions. Sadly, due to the tremendous military struggle of that time and to the eventual defeat of the German state, nearly all of these people were lost to the Western world, never to be heard from again.
As a result of these unfortunate events, the Treblinka Durchgangslager became known to the world as the Treblinka “death camp”—a place where as many as 1 million people (nearly all Jews) were said to have been killed by engine exhaust in specially-designed “gas chambers.” This action, it was said, was a direct consequence of an alleged German policy to kill every Jew in Europe. Thus, this small encampment became a central aspect of the (Jewish-designated) “Holocaust” in which, it is said, some 6 million Jews perished at the hands of the evil Germans.
It is a remarkable story. But is it true? … continue
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