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Photos:
Scene. Published by IMEMC News

Israeli border police block members of "Lahava", a Jewish extremist group, in Jerusalem, April 2021. Credit: Ariel Schalit,AP Published by Haaretz
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by IMEMC News
April 24, 2021

Israelpalestinenews.org: Jewish Israeli extremists arrived ready to rumble Thursday night, in a planned protest march to “restore Jewish dignity” by “breaking the faces of Arabs.” Israeli forces supported their efforts.

Israeli settlers chanting “Death to Arabs” marched through the streets of Jerusalem Thursday night, attacking Palestinians, including Palestinian worshipers who were on their way to pray at the al-Aqsa Mosque for Ramadan prayers.

The settlers were part of a right-wing Israeli group called Lehava, which organized the attack march with the stated aim of “restoring Jewish dignity” by “breaking the faces of Arabs”. [NOTE: read more about Lehava and other extremist groups here.]

Counter-protesters, including left-wing Jewish Israelis and Palestinians, gathered at Zion Square to try to block the attack march from entering the Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem. Another group tried to stand up to the right-wing attackers at Nablus Gate, one of the entrances to the Old City of Jerusalem. [NOTE: for background on the situation in East Jerusalem, go here.]

But the right-wing attackers plowed through the counter-protesters, and headed toward the Palestinian neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, where they slashed car tires of dozens of Palestinian vehicles on Al-Mutran Street.

Lehava joined by the Israeli military
Israeli soldiers joined in the attack on the Palestinian civilians and counter-protesters, attacking the Palestinians with ‘skunk water’ sprayed from trucks, tear gas and rubber-coated steel bullets. 105 Palestinians were wounded in the attacks by Israeli settlers and soldiers.

The majority were treated for their injuries and then released, but 22 remain in the hospital in moderate to severe condition. At least one Palestinian was shot with live ammunition fired by Israeli border police. He was shot in the head and remains in critical condition.

According to the Israeli daily Ha’aretz, right-wing groups that organized the march called for violence in social media groups – some of which were moderated by right-wing Israeli lawmaker Itamar Ben-Gvir. In the message groups, march participants posted that Arabs (meaning Palestinians in Jerusalem) should be hanged, and one member wrote, “We’re burning Arabs today, the Molotov cocktails are already in the trunk.”

The area where the attacks took place drew near to the location where, in 2014, 16-year old Mohammad Abu Khdeir was kidnapped by a gang of right-wing fanatic Israelis, tortured, covered in gasoline and burned to death in a brutal murder motivated by the attackers’ anti-Arab racism. [NOTE: read about Mohammad Abu Khdeir here.]

Following the night of anti-Palestinian violence on Thursday night, Friday morning saw Palestinian youth taking to the streets in Wadi al-Joz and al-Tur neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, where an Israeli settler who was driving through the neighborhood had his car seized and torched by Palestinian youth. No one was injured in that incident.

Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh condemned the Israeli settlers’ and soldiers’ attacks as “organized state terrorism aimed at Judaizing the Holy City, imposing false facts on it, and harming the sanctities.”

In a statement, the Prime Minister called on the international community and international human rights committees to condemn these attacks and work to provide international protection for the citizens of Jerusalem.
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Racism and Incitement in Jerusalem
Haaretz Editorial
April 25, 2021

Thursday’s events in Jerusalem are a stain on Israel’s leadership, on the Israel Police and on Israeli society. For long hours, hundreds of angry teenagers rampaged through the city center, attacking passersby and journalists, throwing rocks and bottles at police officers and chanting “Death to Arabs” and other racist slogans.

This demonstration, by the abhorrent, racist Lehava organization, came after a long period of incitement by politicians from the Religious Zionism party, who amplified only severe assaults on Jews by Palestinians in the Old City, and not attacks on Arabs. The rest of the politicians, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Public Security Minister Amir Ohana, did not see fit to mention this incitement and violence against Arabs.

The police, for their part, made the shamefully irresponsible and inexplicable decision to provoke the city’s Palestinian community by closing the steps outside the Damascus Gate at the start of the holy month of Ramadan, which began April 12. It is difficult to overstate how humiliating this decision was to Jerusalem’s Palestinian residents, on top of the daily humiliations that are their lot. In contrast to its tolerant approach to the Lehava protesters, the police also acted with exceptional aggression toward the Palestinians, including the extensive use of crowd dispersal means, which also affect innocent bystanders.

Palestinians have also played a role in the violence that has erupted in Jerusalem in the past two weeks. Young Palestinians committed a number of egregious assaults on Jewish passersby, which were filmed, shared and amplified on social media. But partial responsibility for these developments lies with Israel, which annexed East Jerusalem 54 years ago and has shaped this part of the city ever since.

Residents of East Jerusalem are an anomaly in the world: They constitute 40 percent of the city’s population but are not citizens of the state of which it is the capital – or indeed of any other state. They do not have the right to vote for any parliament that has an impact on their lives. (Israel has not yet decided whether to allow them to vote in the Palestinian legislative election scheduled for May 22.) As a result, and because Israel does everything possible to suppress the Palestinian leadership in the city, these individuals lack all recourse.

Nevertheless, the Palestinian leadership, like its Israeli counterpart, can be expected to condemn attacks on innocent people. As in the past, it seems that the violence in Jerusalem spilled over into the Gaza Strip this weekend – with rocket fire from Gaza into southern Israel, alongside Israeli retaliation – which further exacerbates the frustration with the unsatisfactory way the government and the police are handling the events in the city.

Responsible leadership could have averted the growing danger to Jews in the city by creating a dialogue with its Palestinian residents, cultivating local leadership and instructing the police to act with tolerance in its dealings with the general public and with impartial resolve against violence and incitement.

The above article is Haaretz’s lead editorial, as published in the Hebrew and English newspapers in Israel.