Israeli leaders are condemning settler attacks. It’s a smokescreen
The recent wave of denunciations from ministers, army chiefs, and right-wing pundits aims to obscure the fact that settler violence is state policy.
In recent days, “settler violence” — a sanitized term for attacks carried out by Israelis against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, with the intention of displacing them from their land — has returned to the headlines. A further spike in pogroms and killings since the start of the Iran war has triggered an unusually large wave of condemnations from the Israeli right, including the chief of staff of the army, prominent right-wing commentators and journalists, and even far-right ministers. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as is his custom, avoided commenting publicly on the matter, but held a closed “security assessment.”
While the volume of these denunciations goes beyond what we have come to expect, the fact that members of Israel’s government, military, and right-wing establishment are expressing concern about rising settler attacks is nothing new. Periodically, a particularly severe incident pushes this violence over its “normal” threshold, crossing an imaginary red line within the Israeli mainstream.
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https://www.972mag.com/israeli-settler-violence-condemnations-smokescreen/
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