MK Eitam: Amona was a pogrom

[Scurrilous]

Knesset Members Eitam, Eldad hurt during evacuation of illegal West Bank outpost; Eitam sustaines head injuries, Eldad breaks hand, faints as troops clash with settlers

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3209176,00.html

<snip>

"Knesset Members Arieh Eldad and Effie Eitam were injured Wednesday morning as troops clashes with settlers during the evacuation of the illegal outpost of Amona.

MK Eldad broke his hand and fainted, before being evacuated to "Shaari Tzedek" hospital in Jerusalem. Meanwhile, MK Eitam sustained head wounds and was evacuated on a stretcher to Hadassah Mount Scopus hospital. An Eitam associate said the MK received oxygen and suffered from nausea following the injury."

<snip>

"Eitam harshly blasted Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Directly addressing Olmert, he said that “you are far from being the successor of (Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon.”

“You have proven today that you are frightened, confused and manipulative. You have acted with stupidity and narrow-mindedness. This is not the way to build premiership,” he charged.

"We would have known how to control this incident like in Gush Katif, but the police officers were ordered to act with violence against the children and public leaders. This is a pogrom against young people."

[bemildred]

1. I suppose just obeying the law is out of the question.

Instead we get these dishonest dog-and-pony shows.

[madaboutharry]

2. I can't bear internal Israeli politics.

Sometimes the phrase "their own worst enemy" really can fit.

[Fredda Weinberg]

3. Do you live there?

I've known enough Sabras not to you judge them by my standards. We may come from the same stock, but if you think the US post 9/11 has been stressful, imagine what a lifetime would do to you.

[madaboutharry]

4. I use to.

n/t

[Violet_Crumble]

6. So why do so many Americans judge Palestinians to their own standards?

I don't really get that. It's not like the Palestinians haven't endured a lifetime of stress either, but some folk insist on plonking them into a scenario set in nice, safe, middle-class USA and condemning them for not reacting like some suburban American would...

Violet...

[Violet_Crumble]

5. Amona is a pogrom?

That's not all that different from the repetitive assertions made by some in this forum that dismantling settlements is ethnic cleansing. I guess if it's good enough for an Israeli MK, then it's good enough for fine, upstanding American progressivedemocratliberal types...


Violet...

[Englander]

7. Yes, it is good to see the views of Isreali MKs, expressed.

Although I must admit to being slightly surprised that the Isreali MKs are from
the Renewed National Religious Zionism party, no leftists, them.

[Englander]

8. From the NYT;

'Settlers in West Bank Outpost Battle Police Who Came to Raze Houses

By GREG MYRE
Published: February 2, 2006

JERUSALEM, Feb. 1 — The Israeli police on Wednesday battled Jewish settlers who confronted them with stones and cinder blocks in one of the fiercest clashes among Israelis in years, leaving more than 200 injured, including police officers, settlers and two right-wing members of Parliament.

The police had been ordered to tear down nine houses the settlers had built without government permission on a West Bank hilltop. The order was part of a tougher approach toward such settler activity by Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

The confrontation, at the Amona outpost near Ramallah, involved thousands of police officers and mostly young Orthodox Jews and was more violent than clashes last summer when carefully prepared Israeli Army troops evicted settlers from the Gaza Strip. The houses destroyed belonged to an unauthorized outpost that settlers had established and that Israeli leaders had long said they would remove, along with dozens of similar attempts to establish new settlements.

>snip

Moments later the clashes began. The young settlers pelted the police with large stones and chunks of concrete, as well as light bulbs filled with paint. More than 80 policemen were hurt, almost all of them lightly, though one who was hit in the head was hospitalized in serious condition, said a police spokesman, Micky Rosenfeld.

"In my many years in the Israeli police force I have never seen such violence against police," Yisrael Yitzhaki, the police commander at the scene, told the army radio.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/02/international/middleeast/02mideast.html

[Englander]

9. Haaretz Editorial;

Unmasking Amona

By Haaretz Editorial

Before the dust of the Amona demolitions has cleared, the settlers have begun their next media offensive. They insist on foisting on Israeli society their own narrow, self-victimized narrative of the outposts' evacuation. This tactic failed after the Gaza disengagement, yet they are obstinately determined to wring any emotional capital out of it.

Wednesday night they prayed for the life of 14-year-old Yehiam Eyal, whose skull was cracked, and blamed the policemen, who clubbed him, for his injury. One's heart goes out to the boy lying helpless in his bed, yet one cannot but marvel at this cynical and malicious emotional manipulation.

Amona was born in sin. The children of the "mainstream" settlers in Ofra and other settlements, who were swept away to a more extreme position than their parents, set it up as an illegal outpost.

It is on private land overlooking a settlement, whose legal status derives only from a political definition. Ariel Sharon encouraged them when he was infrastructure minister. They knew no government would stop them. For a short time they dwelt in temporary structures, then built permanent houses - the ones the court ordered demolished. Amona residents had not moved into those houses

On Wednesday, after the High Court of Justice rejected the settlers' petition, the demolition order was finally carried out.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/678192.html

[Scurrilous]

10. Police: MK Eitam lied

Video footage shows right-wing Knesset member likely hurt by stones, not police horse; Eitam in response: Police in panic, spreading lies

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3211196,00.html

<snip>

"Doubts regarding the circumstances of Knesset Member Effie Eitam's injury Wednesday during the evacuation of the illegal West Bank outpost of Amona are growing, Israel's leading newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported Sunday."

<snip>

"After he was injured during the evacuation and rushed to the Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem, Eitam submitted to lengthy interviews and slammed police violence, including a horse that supposedly trampled him and about a police officer that hit him with a club.

Police footage, however, reveals a different picture. In the video, mounted forces are nowhere near Eitam at the time of his injury.

According to eyewitnesses, Eitam may have been hit in his head by a stone thrown by settlers. The eyewitnesses reported a large number of stones were being hurled by settlers at the time of Eitam's injury.

The eyewitnesses' claim was reinforced by a police recording where Eitam is seen urging right-wing activists: "Be careful not to hit me with the stones."

[pelsar]

11. they got what they deserved....

no sympathy for the kids. (they've been provoking the police and IDF for a long time now)...nor their parents who "educated" them, and then sat back and watched them (or lost control)....police should have had bigger horses....but just for some added info:

most the kids were ashkanazi, the police bedouin and spharadi....no love lost between the groups