Rights Group Video Shows Settler Violence

By JTA May 21, 2012

A video distributed by an Israeli human rights organization shows Jewish settlers firing at a group of rock-throwing Palestinians as Israeli soldiers look on.

Settlers from the West Bank village of Yitzhar clashed May 19 with residents of the Palestinian village Asira al-Qibliya. A Palestinian man, 24 was injured in the head by the gunfire.

The video released Sunday by B’tselem shows both Palestinians and settlers hurling rocks at each other, as smoke rises from fires started in the underbrush.

Both sides claim that the other began the rock throwing and set the fires.

At least three Israeli soldiers stood with the settlers and did not intervene as they fired on rock-throwing Palestinians.

The video shows a group of Palestinian men picking up and carrying the injured Palestinian man and running with him toward an ambulance.

B’tselem has called on the Judea and Samaria Police to arrest the settlers who fired on the Palestinians and has asked the Military Police Investigative Unit to open an investigation into the soldiers that did not intervene to protect the Palestinians.

A Yitzhar spokesman told Israeli media that the men carrying rifles were part of the settlement’s security service.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

This year, we have stood together in strength and sorrow. Our Forward team has worked around the clock to help you find clarity amid the chaos.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO