The violence has been described as a 'pogrom' by both the Olmert and a Haaretz journalist who witnessed it and received a settler rock on his head for his pains.
"As a Jew, I was ashamed at the scenes of Jews opening fire at innocent Arabs in Hebron. There is no other definition than the term 'pogrom' to describe what I have seen," he said at the weekly cabinet meeting.
"We are the sons of a nation who know what is meant by a pogrom, and I am using the word only after deep reflection," the prime minister said, quoted by public radio.
The violence was so bad that the UN Security Council issued a non-binding statement on Friday that "welcomed Israel's evacuation of settlers from the compound in Hebron on December 4" but also "condemned the resulting settler violence, including against Palestinian civilians and property." The UN statement came a day after 250 settlers were forcibly removed from the Hebron compound by Israeli security forces acting on an Israeli high court ruling.
Not only did these terrorists shoot 3 Palestinian civilians, they also set fire to Palestinian homes.
But that was not all the violence. A member of the Israeli SS assaulted a young female photographer on assignment for the Israeli daily Haaretz, armed with a camera...as Haaretz itself commented
"During discussions between Haaretz and the army yesterday, the soldiers' version changed considerably. Some details, confidently reported in the first hours after the incident, turned out to be mistaken. Lies are nothing new: When a soldier gets into trouble, his comrades tend to cover for him.
The attack on Scheflan raises questions regarding what might happen when an ordinary civilian (a Palestinian, or sometimes a right-wing activist) is attacked under similar circumstances. The victim is sometimes turned into the perpetrator, without reference to what actually happened. "
There is a suspicion that this violence had as its motive an intent to set fire to the whole of the Middle East, as according to Haaretz "The violence included the desecration of Muslim cemeteries in Hebron and anti-Muslim graffiti on mosque walls in the city, as well as around Qalqilya and Ramallah...Civil Administration officers in the area quickly washed off the graffiti, before pictures of it could be obtained by the Qatari news station Al Jazeera. "
Meanwhile, the human rights organisation Association of Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) issued its Annual Report in which they warned: "Basic human rights, such as health, a life of dignity, education, housing, equality, freedom from racism, freedom of expression, privacy and democracy are increasingly being violated in Israel...extremely worrisome trends at the center of which are violations of the most elementary human rights...reminiscent, in many and increasing ways, of the apartheid regime in South Africa"
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