Former director of Mossad: What is happening reminds me of the Holocaust, I feel ashamed to be Jewish!

Middle East Eye

The fifty-kilometer journey from Ramallah to Nablus, which used to take an hour, now takes half a day because of Israeli roadblocks. Along the highway, Israeli flags and posters of the ultra-Orthodox rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson are on every corner.

His followers believe that all the land belongs to the Jews and that the Arabs are destined “to be slaves to the children of Israel.” Today, armed settlers move freely, burning cars, houses and destroying crops in villages such as Turmus Ayya or Beita.

In Beita, peaceful youth protests are suppressed with blood; sixteen people were killed recently, including Turkish-American Aysenur Ezgi Eygi. On the hilltops above Palestinian villages, white caravans are springing up every week – chaotic vanguards that soon turn into permanent settlements.

“Settlers now rule the West Bank. The army does what they say!”- says a bus passenger. According to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, since October 7, 2023, Israel has expelled 59 Palestinian communities (over four thousand people) and destroyed the homes of another thirty-two thousand in refugee camps.

The UN reports that over a thousand Palestinians, including two hundred children, have been killed during this period. Tamir Pardo, former Mossad director, declared after a visit: “My mother was a Holocaust survivor, and what I saw reminded me of the events against the Jews in the last century. I felt ashamed to be Jewish…”.

This new wave of violence stems from the 2022 political pact between Benjamin Netanyahu and extreme right leaders: Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. Netanyahu gave Smotrich control of the West Bank through a civilian body, the Settlement Administration, in violation of international law requiring military administration.

This body legally serves only settlers. This year alone, the cabinet approved the construction of thirty-four new settlements.

As Minister of Finance, Smotrich has allocated 7 billion shekels ($2.4 billion) for settler roads – taking thirty percent of the national road budget for just three percent of the population.

Meanwhile, Ben Gvir has massively armed settlers with M16 assault rifles and drones. The West Bank has become so dangerous that settlers also attack Israeli left-wing activists, such as Lior Amihai (director of Peace Noah) and Aviv Tatarsky, as well as foreign journalists.

Palestinians have no protection. Anyone who throws stones is shot, while seventy thousand Palestinian Authority soldiers serve as Israel’s collaborators in suppressing internal resistance.

Furthermore, the new property laws announced by Smotrich aim to “kill the idea of a Palestinian state” by enticing the looting of property in Area C. However, the spirit of resistance (sumud) remains alive in villages such as Burqa.

The radical homesh vanguard rises above, whose settlers regularly descend on the village to terrorize the residents. But the villagers organize with sticks and drive them out. At the entrance to the Burqa is a memorial wall with over seventy names of martyrs since 1936 who fought against the British, the Nakba and the current occupation.

Next to the wall stood the statue of Handala, symbolizing Palestinian resistance. Israeli soldiers cut the statue in two to break the morale of the village, but Handala’s feet remained. They could not uproot them. They remain firmly entrenched, stubborn and immovable in Palestinian land. square

Source: prizrenpost