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Uprooting Jews

Amona Jew-on-Jew violence report published


Source: Ha'aretz
January 22, 2007

What happens when the international community mercilessly squeezes Israeli governments to give away land that most of their own citizens believe belongs to the nation?

One answer may be found in an unprecedented event that took place in Samaria on February 1, 2006.

There, according to a report which is about to be submitted to Israel’s state comptroller and the Knesset speaker - among others - Israeli police acting under orders of the Olmert government purposefully inflicted brutal violence on devout Jews.

About 4000 men, women, teenagers and younger children, a majority of them religious, were exercising their right to peacefully protest Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s decision to demolish nine new homes built in the Samarian community of Amona.

Instigated by the Israeli antisemitic Peace Now movement, and in response to a ruling by the ultra-liberal Supreme Court that the houses be destroyed, 10,000 police and soldiers moved into the area to ensure the order was carried out.

The scenes that ensued shocked the nation, as policemen on horses rode full tilt into orthodox Jewish men and conservatively-dressed girls were hit with truncheons and bodily dragged from the rooftops.

According to an investigative report compiled by Human Rights in Yesha and the Yesha Council, (Yesha being an acronym for Judea, Samaria and Gaza – Jewish lands the world insists belongs to the Arabs), the violence was pre-planned.

It was purposefully perpetrated by a police command acting under government orders. Olmert, who had just taken over the premiership from Ariel Sharon, was apparently determined to “show the settlers” that he was as tough as his comatose boss.

A number of civilians allegedly attacked by the police are still suffering from the physical and psychological trauma. The report says about 100 complaints against the security forces have been filed with the justice department, and more are being drawn up.

Commentators have sought to understand or “explain” how an Israeli government and its security forces could have so brutally turned against their own people.

Amona happened just six months after those same uniformed personnel forcefully uprooted 10,000 Jews from their homes in the Gaza Strip.

That “Disengagement” was widely reported as having been an Israeli initiative. The historical record shows, however, that intense international pressure sustained over more than two decades, especially by the United States, has pushed one Israeli government after another to act against their people’s best interests.

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