-“Army: Settlers have crossed red line
Senior IDF officers on Thursday lambasted the legal system’s inability to effectively crack down on radical West Bank settlers after a group of young far-right activists went on a rampage that culminated in an attack on an IDF position near Ramallah. . . . The reservists tried to fend off the attackers, who called the soldiers ‘Nazis.’ Earlier in the day, soldiers clashed with settlers near the settlement of Yitzhar, south of Nablus, after they began throwing rocks at passing Palestinian cars. . . . Two soldiers were wounded in the clashes – one with a fracture in his hand. The other soldier was treated at the scene after a settler’s dog bit him after being ordered to attack by his owner.” (Read more from jpost.com)
This is how humans behave when we’re certain we have God on our side.
-“Israel’s Dark Art of Ensnaring Palestinian Collaborators
Collaboration comes in various guises, including land dealers, who buy Palestinian-owned land to sell it to settlers or the Israeli government; armed agents who assist Israeli soldiers in raids; and infiltrators into the national organizations and their armed wings who foil resistance operations. . . . With hospitals and medicines in short supply, some patients have little hope of recovery without treatment abroad or in Israel. According to the Israeli branch of Physicians for Human Rights, the Shin Bet is exploiting the distress of these families to pressure them to agree to collaborate in return for an exit permit. Last month, the group released details of 32 cases in which sick Gazans admitted they were denied permits after refusing to become informants. . . . As with other occupation regimes, Israel has long relied on the most traditional way of recruiting collaborators: torture. While a decision by the Israeli Supreme Court in 1999 banned torture, the evidence suggests the Shin Bet simply ignored the ruling. Two Israeli human rights groups, B’Tselem and Hamoked, found last year that seven “special” interrogation methods amounting to torture are still being regularly employed, including beatings, painful binding, back bending, body stretching and prolonged sleep deprivation. Detention provides other opportunities for recruitment. In the past 17 years alone, 150,000 Palestinians have been prosecuted by the military regime. According to the Israeli group Yesh Din, 95 percent of these trials end in plea bargains, offering yet another chance to persuade a detainee to turn informant in return for a reduced sentence.” (Read more from antiwar.com)