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<h1 class="title" id="page-title">Merciless Israeli mobs are hunting
Palestinians</h1>
<div class="submitted">
<span property="dc:date dc:created"
content="2014-07-27T16:41:20+00:00" datatype="xsd:dateTime"
rel="sioc:has_creator">Submitted by <span class="username"
xml:lang="" about="/users/rania-khalek"
typeof="sioc:UserAccount" property="foaf:name" datatype="">Rania
Khalek</span> on Sun, 07/27/2014 - 16:41<b><small><small><small><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/merciless-israeli-mobs-are-hunting-palestinians">http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/merciless-israeli-mobs-are-hunting-palestinians</a></small></small></small></b><br>
</span> </div>
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media-element file-full" style="width:618px;"><br>
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<p>All eyes are on Gaza, where the death toll from Israel’s
merciless bombing campaign has <a
href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/26/palestinian-death-toll-1000-gaza_n_5623370.html">topped
1,000</a>. </p>
<p>But back in Jerusalem, where 16-year-old <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/muhammad-abu-khudair">Muhammad
Abu Khudair</a> was burned alive by Jewish vigilantes in a
“revenge killing” incited by Israeli politicians early this
month, right-wing lynch mobs continue to roam the streets in
search of Arabs to attack. </p>
<p>Their most recent victims are 20-year-old Palestinians Amir
Shwiki and Samer Mahfouz from the Beit Hannina neighborhood in
occupied East Jerusalem. The pair were severely beaten into
unconsciousness on Friday night by Israeli youths armed with
iron bars and baseball bats. </p>
<p>Mahfouz <a
href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/.premium-1.607312">told
the Israeli newspaper <em>Ha’aretz</em></a> that he and
Shwiki were on their way to the light rail when they were
stopped by “a man [coming] from the direction of Neve Ya’akov,”
an illegal Jewish-only Israeli settlement in occupied East
Jerusalem. </p>
<p>“He said give me a cigarette. I told him I don’t have any, and
he heard [from my accent] I’m Arab and went away, coming back
with his friends, maybe 12 people. They had sticks and iron bars
and they hit us over the head,” Mahfouz recounted. </p>
<p><em>Ha’aretz</em> added, “According to the victims, police
officers that arrived at the scene did not call an ambulance,
and they were instead evacuated by passersby to receive medical
treatment at a Beit Khanina [sic] clinic. They were later rushed
to Hadassah University Hospital, Ein Karem in serious
condition.”</p>
<p>Though investigators believe the beating to be <a
href="http://www.jpost.com/National-News/Two-Palestinians-hospitalized-after-being-severely-beaten-by-Jewish-mob-in-Jerusalem-369021">racially
motivated</a>, no one has been arrested. </p>
<h2>Police complicity</h2>
<p>Israeli police have a pattern of ignoring hate crimes against
Palestinians, as was the case immediately following the reported
kidnapping of Muhammad Abu Khudair. Police <a
href="http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=709574">did
not immediately respond</a> when his family called to report
that he had been kidnapped and they actively thwarted efforts to
locate those who murdered him by <a
href="http://www.richardsilverstein.com/2014/07/02/israeli-police-plant-false-story-murdered-palestinian-boy-was-gay-flood-social-media-with-disinformation/">spreading
false rumors</a> that Abu Khudair was murdered by his family
in an “honor killing” over his sexuality. </p>
<p>Police also <a
href="http://mondoweiss.net/2014/07/palestinian-murdered-answers.html">neglected
to respond</a> when Abu Khudair’s murderers tried to kidnap
10-year-old Mousa Zalum from the same East Jerusalem
neighborhood two days earlier. </p>
<p>When police aren’t busy ignoring Jewish vigilante violence
against Palestinians, they are actively participating in it. </p>
<p>On Thursday night last week, police teamed up with a Jewish mob
assaulting two Palestinian men while they were delivering bread
to grocery markets on Jaffa Street in West Jerusalem from their
van. </p>
<p>The men — identified by <a
href="http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=715794">Ma’an
News Agency</a> as 20-year-old Amir Mazin Abu Eisha and Laith
Ubeidat (age not specified) — were encircled and beaten with
empty bottles by a mob of some 20 to 30 Israelis, according to
their attorney Khaldun Nijim. </p>
<p>Rather than assist the men as they were being attacked, Nijim <a
href="http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=715794">told</a>
Ma’an, “The Israeli police stopped them in their van and pointed
guns at them.” Nijim continued: “After they drove away a few
meters, the police shot at them. They then stopped and were
assaulted again.”</p>
<p>After barring an ambulance from transferring Abu Eisha, who
sustained head and ear injuries, to the hospital for medical
treatment, police detained the two Palestinian men at a Russian
Compound police station close to the scene and charged them with
“having a knife and obstructing the work of police,” according
to Nijim. </p>
<p>Abu Eisha and Ubeidat were eventually released on bail but are
currently under 10 days of house arrest. Meanwhile, several of
the mob participants filed complaints against their victims,
accusing the men of trying to assault them with a knife.</p>
<h2>Racist activism on the rise</h2>
<p>The same Ma’an article noted that in Jerusalem, “Jaffa street
has been covered with flyers warning Arabs not to ‘touch’ Jewish
women in recent weeks, as part of a right-wing Jewish campaign
to prevent mixing among Jews and Arabs.”</p>
<p>The fliers were probably designed and distributed by <a
href="http://972mag.com/campaign-calls-on-arab-men-to-keep-out-of-jlem-away-from-jewish-girls/54263/">Lehava</a>,
a fanatical anti-miscegenation group whose sister organization,
Hemla, <a
href="http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/magazine/a-strange-kind-of-mercy-1.364417">receives
state funding</a> to “rescue” Jewish women from romantic
relationships with Arab men. </p>
<p>Leanne Gale, an anti-racist activist living in Jerusalem,
recently reported on her blog that Lehava has been <a
href="http://mondoweiss.net/2014/07/i-have-never-been-more-conscious-of-my-womanhood-than-right-now-in-jerusalem.html">holding
nightly gatherings</a> in West Jerusalem’s Zion Square and
littering all of Jerusalem with stickers and fliers in Arabic
that state, among other things, “Do not even think about a
Jewish woman.” Other catchphrases adorned on Lehava T-shirts and
stickers include, “Jews love Jews,” and “The women of Israel for
the nation of Israel,” according to Gale. </p>
<h2>Fascist mobs from Haifa to Tel Aviv</h2>
<p>Violent mobs of anti-Arab fascists aren’t isolated to
Jerusalem.</p>
<p>Last week in Haifa, the Arab deputy mayor and his son were
brutally <a
href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/.premium-1.606240">beaten</a> by
a mob of Jewish supremacists chanting “death to Arabs” and
“death to leftists” in response to a rally against the Gaza
onslaught. Police did nothing to stop the assault.</p>
<p>Similar fascist demonstrators have surfaced in supposedly
liberal <a
href="http://mondoweiss.net/2014/07/death-arabs-jerusalem.html">Tel
Aviv as well</a>, verbally and physically <a
href="http://forward.com/articles/202383/tel-aviv-is-under-red-alert-in-many-ways/">attacking</a>
Palestinians and leftists protesting the war on Gaza. </p>
<p>Israeli blogger Elizabeth Tsurkov, who has been regularly
attending and <a
href="https://twitter.com/Elizrael/status/493147263430950913">live-tweeting</a>
the racist attacks against anti-war demonstrators in recent
weeks, heard a new racist chant mocking the more than 200
children slaughtered by Israel’s merciless bombing campaign in
Gaza: “Tomorrow there’s no school in Gaza, they don’t have any
children left.” </p>
<h2>Incitement from the top</h2>
<p>While calls for extermination have been rampant both <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/jimmy-johnson/watch-profound-and-haunting-short-film-death-arabs">in
the streets of Israel</a> and on Israeli <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/patrick-strickland/bombing-gaza-children-gives-me-orgasm-israelis-celebrate-slaughter-facebook">social</a>
<a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/patrick-strickland/kill-palestinian-every-hour-says-new-israeli-facebook-page">media</a>
for months, the “death to Arabs” sentiment is not isolated to
vigilantes. </p>
<p>Take for example Israeli lawmaker <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/ayelet-shaked">Ayelet
Shaked</a>, a rising star in the far-right-wing Jewish Home
party, who recently <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israeli-lawmakers-call-genocide-palestinians-gets-thousands-facebook-likes">called
for genocide</a> by slaughtering Palestinian mothers to
prevent them from giving birth to “little snakes.”</p>
<p>Fast forward several weeks, and the UN is reporting an <a
href="https://twitter.com/unrwa/status/493120739310989313">alarming
rise</a> in miscarriages and premature births in Gaza, where <a
href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/24/born-in-hell-the-gaza-maternity-ward.html">newborn
infants are dying</a> due electricity blackouts that shutdown
their incubators.</p>
<p>Another Israeli public official inciting violence is Dov Lior,
Chief Rabbi of the illegal West Bank settlement Kiryat Arba, who
<a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/.premium-1.606688">issued
a religious edict</a> declaring that it is permissible under
Jewish religious law for the Israeli army to “punish the enemy
population with whatever measures it deems proper” even if that
means “exterminat[ing] the enemy.”</p>
<p>Since then, portions of Gaza have been reduced to rubble in
apocalypse-like scenes that look indistinguishable from the
flattened cities of Syria. </p>
<p>With all eyes glued to Israel’s destruction of the besieged
Gaza Strip, little attention is being paid to the heightened
levels of racism in Israeli society as demands for “death to
Arabs” echo across the country with devastating consequences for
Palestinians from <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/children-are-majority-those-injured-shujaiya-massacre-says-doctor">Shujaiya</a> to <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/nine-palestinians-killed-protests-across-west-bank">Qalandiya</a> to Jerusalem
to Haifa. </p>
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