Settlers Attack Palestinian Olive Pickers, Damage Trees

[Purveyor]

In the village of Burin on Sunday, Palestinian olive pickers and Israeli volunteers were attacked by masked settlers, who arrived from the direction of the nearby settlement of Yitzhar, notorious for being violent.

Two Palestinians and two Israelis were injured by the settlers who attacked them with stones and iron bars, according to Rabbis for Human Rights, whose volunteers were attacked. The Israelis, aged 71 and 18, were both injured in their faces.

Close to 2,000 Palestinian olive trees have been either uprooted or burned in recent months in areas the Israeli army knows to be flash points, where it should be providing protection for the Palestinian olive pickers, Rabbis for Human Rights wrote in a statement.

Elsewhere in the northern West Bank, Palestinian olive growers from the village of Qaryut on Sunday discovered that settlers damaged their trees the day before. Officials from the Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture who arrived at the scene counted 60 damaged trees belonging to 12 different farmers.

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http://972mag.com/photos-settlers-attack-palestinian-olive-pickers-damage-trees/80720/

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

1. In some ways it sounds like a page out of some story from the old south.

Masked men destroy African Americans homes, businesses and anything that they have of value: to drive them off.

White Police remain indifferent.


Now the similarities.


Masked settlers destroy Palestinian homes, businesses and anything that they have of value: to drive them off.

IDF remain indifferent.

[Scurrilous]

2. Why rabbis are helping Palestinians defend their olive harvest

Rabbis for Human Rights has been caught in the crossfire as settlers attack Palestinians trying to harvest the crucial prized olive crop.

<snip>

"On Sunday, four people were attacked by masked Israeli settlers wielding iron bars and stones as they picked olives in the West Bank village of Burin, resulting in light injuries – a common occurrence during the annual olive harvest in the West Bank.

While most of the settler violence is directed at Palestinians, two of those hurt in the latest attack were Israeli volunteers with Rabbis for Human Rights (RHR), an organization comprised of rabbis and rabbinical students which has, for more than a decade, sought to protect Palestinians and their trees during the olive harvest. Olive trees are not only a major source of Palestinians' livelihood, but a mainstay of the West Bank landscape and a symbol of their roots in the land.

According to RHR, the situation has improved somewhat in recent years, but more than 1,600 olive trees have been vandalized by settlers in the past two months alone, including 100 trees destroyed in Qaryut near Nablus this weekend, and 400 olive trees burned down in Jalud a week before.

"Non-Jews have property rights in the Land of Israel, and protecting the ability of farmers to safely access and make a living from their lands is part of honoring the image of God in every human being," says Arik Ascherman, the president and senior rabbi."

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/Olive-Press/2013/1022/Why-rabbis-are-helping-Palestinians-defend-their-olive-harvest