Leaked internal document shows pre-coordinated messaging campaign behind Lander media stunt. @IraStoll freebeacon.substack.com/p/le…

🚨 TERROR ATTACK ON ISRAELI CIVILIANS Israel imposes full West Bank lockdown after Hebron terror attack. Two gunmen opened fire at a checkpoint, wounding 5 Israelis (2 critical). IDF killed both attackers; large ammo cache found. Netanyahu blames Hamas, orders Hebron cordon and full West Bank closure starting today. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said "it appears that Hamas terrorists were planning a major attack aimed at murdering innocent civilians.”

Two events on Saturday captured the problem of settler violence. The first was a little-publicized provocation by Palestinians during the olive harvest, when they approached a settlement’s grazing lands pelting a shepherd with stones. The second was an unprovoked settler attack on European diplomats who had come to protect the harvest. At 7:35 a.m., according to an Israeli emergency-response group, a shepherd from the Ma’ale Ahuvia farm was hit by stones in the farm’s grazing land near Taybeh. He was lightly hurt and got himself to treatment. Residents say the harvesters began on Deir Jarir’s land and then crossed into pasture the IDF had approved for the farm. Palestinians, for their part, claim that settlers advanced on their harvest under IDF guard, firing live rounds. The IDF has not commented on the clash or its alleged presence, and no footage corroborates the gunfire. The casting of the IDF as an accomplice to settler violence is narratively compelling for those who see all Israelis as equally malicious, but it also sets off alarm bells for Israelis who know that if the IDF is there, it is far more likely to be separating the two sides than supporting a settler attack. The second incident took place six hours after the Ma’ale Ahuvia clash, a few kilometers away. A little before 1:30 p.m., masked men with metal bars descended on a delegation of Belgian, French and Polish diplomats in Taybeh. A French mayor put on his tricolor sash, and it didn’t help. The window of the Belgian consulate’s car was smashed. It was a disgusting act of baseless vigilante justice. Belgium’s foreign minister blamed Israel’s settlement policy and pledged to push for further EU sanctions. France demanded that Israel arrest those responsible, and Poland declared itself deeply outraged. The latter incident has rightly been condemned by nearly every corner of the Israeli establishment. The IDF called it a severe act of violence by Israeli rioters, and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar condemned it without caveats. The Prime Minister’s Office said any violence against diplomats is unacceptable. A similar incident a day earlier is covered in the shadow of provocation and response. According to the Binyamin Regional Council, hundreds of “terrorists and anarchists” threw stones and fired fireworks directly at Israelis, Palestinian Authority vehicles were allegedly on hand, and left-wing activists had organized the confrontation so the cameras could film the Israeli response. The response, when it came, was itself highly problematic. According to one witness, 50 Israelis, many masked and some carrying gas canisters, came down the hill onto the terraced groves. Some set trees alight and used slings to throw stones at the harvesters, who retreated downhill and threw stones back. Caught in the middle was Heidi Levine, a photographer working for The Washington Post. Wearing a vest clearly marked “Press,” she was pushed to the ground and beaten, and was left with a broken rib, a broken vertebra and a finger injury that needs surgery. President Isaac Herzog, who called Heidi Levine after Shabbat to apologize for her beating, said Taybeh weighed on his conscience as well. The past two days are an accurate sample of the situation in Judea and Samaria, in a word: chaos. Yet what often emerges in media depictions is not chaos, and certainly not tit-for-tat, but a cohesive narrative of victims and victimizers. The olive harvest in particular offers the international media a golden opportunity to write its favorite story, with images to match: ancient trees, grandmothers on ladders and masked young men cresting the ridge. The farmer is old, the settler is new, and the olive tree is a symbol of the former’s indigenous connection to the land. The PA and its supporting cast of NGOs understand this visual language well. They not only rush to the fields to document any potential clashes but use the tree as a key weapon in the struggle over the territory. The PA buys hundreds of thousands of olive saplings and distributes them free to Palestinians to plant at strategic points. Under the Ottoman law still in force in Judea and Samaria, land cultivated for a decade can be claimed. Olive trees are facts on the ground while they stand and propaganda assets once they fall. Yet the media’s blind spot is no excuse. What happens in these hills is closer to tribal warfare than to a morality play. Many settlers cite exactly that state of affairs to justify their vigilantism, yet one who seeks to awaken a more statist Israeli to the violent realities of the frontier does less to vindicate violence than to indict the state. Apparently, a country whose writ runs from southern Lebanon to Gaza cannot hold the hills half an hour from its own capital. As many defenders of the settlements, including myself, are quick to point out, the vast majority of the roughly half-million Israelis in Judea and Samaria have never thrown a stone. Israeli security officials put the violent hard core at a few hundred, around 70 of them leaders. They know their names, and they have mapped the 14 outposts they operate from. If that is the case, finding the people responsible should not be difficult. Justice, as it so often is, is not simply a moral duty. It is a matter of state legitimacy. That charge may echo the many media outlets, NGOs and governments that seize on these events to challenge Israel’s fundamental legitimacy, but it is nonetheless true. Israelis in general, and right-wingers in particular, bristle at anything bearing the fingerprints of international organizations, whose hand is most often seen pointing accusingly at their very existence. On one point, they are right. Settler violence is not what primarily drives the push for sanctions. That push is the political momentum of the Gaza war, searching for a new outlet. Had no settler violence existed, British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband would likely have seen fit to invent it. But that is not the same as saying settler violence makes no difference. Momentum needs fuel, and every masked man in an olive grove supplies it. Each attack turns a campaign that might have stalled at statements into import bans, and import bans into the next round of measures. Each attack also weakens Israel’s ability to fight back. When U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee, among Israel’s staunchest advocates, calls an attack by Israelis “a despicable act of terror,” the masked men are no longer simply handing Israel’s critics a pretext. They are depriving its friends of the ability to disagree. The tragic reality of Judea and Samaria will not bend to the wishes of its indignant defenders. Palestinian violence against Israelis will always be played down or omitted altogether, while settler violence will always erode Israel’s standing abroad. Israel must reconcile itself to this reality and act accordingly.

Мелани Филипс очень доходчиво объясняет удивительное превращение левых либералов в бесчеловечную фашистоидную дрянь. Все предельно просто и закономерно.