This week, I want to address a topic that tends to be uncomfortable for the Jewish and pro-Israel communities. On February 14, Israeli Jews entered a Palestinian village east of Hebron and vandalized two cars. Ali Tayseer Jaber said he and his brother came to his property to find their car windows smashed with Stars of David spray-painted on the vehicles.
The day before this incident, Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) stated that they launched an investigation into the killing of a 27-year-old Palestinian man, allegedly by Israelis who live in West Bank settlements. A couple of weeks prior, a Palestinian house and car in Turmus Aiya near Ramallah were set on fire by masked men, believed by the Police to be right-wing Jewish extremists.
These are a few of what security forces describe as “price-tag” (revenge) attacks for the recent surge in Palestinian terrorism. These crimes are coming at a time of rising tensions as Israel was forced to conduct several counterterror operations that have killed about 46 Palestinians (primarily terrorists).
Since 2005, extremist Israeli Jews have carried out attacks against Israeli Arabs and Palestinians, often in response to when the Israeli government halts settlement building or in response to Palestinian terrorism. The movement began during the Gaza disengagement and the destruction of nine houses in the Amona outpost in the West Bank about six months later.
These price-tag attacks are usually motivated by racism, as the perpetrators leave hateful, anti-Arab and anti-government slogans in the name of expanding settlements. The ADL has reported that these extremists have targeted mosques, churches, Arab and Jewish homes and property, Israeli military bases and vehicles, and other Israeli Jews.
In some cases, these extremists have injured members of the Israel Police and the Israel Defense Forces. Just last week, The Jerusalem Post reported that Jewish extremists assaulted IDF soldiers after torching a Palestinian vehicle near the village of Urif.
Times of Israel recently published an article about the recent price tag attacks and addressed accountability issues. Arresting price tag perpetrators is exceedingly rare and convicting them of their crimes is even more unusual. The majority of charges in such cases just get dropped.
Israel doesn't do enough to stop price tag attacks
While the Israeli government has set up a national task force to investigate and gather intelligence on the attacks, they’ve been criticized for not doing enough to stop them. In 2012, former IDF chief of staff Dan Halutz echoed this sentiment and stated, “if we wanted, we could catch them and when we want to, we will.”
“If we wanted, we could catch them and when we want to, we will.”
Dan Halutz
These price tag attacks are morally reprehensible, and our community must condemn them to the fullest degree. These vicious acts of violence have led to more escalations and harmed innocent Israelis and Palestinians. Price tag attacks are not an Israeli government policy or counterterror operation, these are attacks by rouge extremists who seek to establish a balance of terror by their own means.
THIS TOPIC is challenging for our community to discuss but it should not stop us from doing so. In January, we saw a recent uptick in these price-tag crimes in response to the spike in terror activity that has left innocent Israelis dead. These attacks play a role in the cycle of violence we see in the West Bank. The true nature of what goes on is not something we can ignore and it does not help us remedy the situation.
From personal experience, most people I speak to about these attacks in casual conversation struggle to condemn them fully. There is always a “but” after the condemnation. When dealing with Israel on the public stage, we are so used to being in defense mode.
An endless list of entities, like the BDS movement, and NGOs, like Amnesty International, seek to harm and delegitimize Israel and ignore Palestinian terrorism. It has left us unable to just outright condemn certain aspects of the conflict, like these attacks, without feeling the need to explain everything else.
Haaretz reported that Shin Bet officials believe most Israelis living in the settlements reject price tag attacks. Even major rabbis have condemned them, including the late Rabbi Haim Drukman, who served as a member of the National Religious Party in the Knesset. In a 2011 interview with Arutz Sheva, Rabbi Drukman referred to a price-tag burning of a mosque in the Bedouin Arab village, stating that such attacks are “horrible, shocking, anti-Jewish and anti-morality.”
A story from 2010 shows us just how unpopular these price-tag attacks are within the communities of people who live in the West Bank. After an arson attack on a West Bank mosque, six prominent rabbis from the nearby Gush Etzion visited the mosque to deliver new copies of the Koran that had been burned.
As Israeli citizens, we should be allowed to condemn our government and specific communities without fear that anti-Israel groups will weaponize this against us. Condemning price tag attacks, which many prominent Israeli leaders have done, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, does not normalize terror attacks committed by Palestinians. Even a person who leans Right and supports the Jewish expansion of settlements in the West Bank should be able to differentiate between the ideology and the indiscriminate targeting, harassment and murder of ordinary Palestinians.
I do not pretend to know about the realities of the West Bank and what daily life is like for the communities of Israelis and Palestinians who live within walking distance of each other. But I do know that turning a blind eye to violence from our community is a mistake and one that we cannot afford to make.
One of the things that makes me a proud Israeli is our history of prioritizing human life above all. We are not a society that glorifies terror and we do not justify and pay the salaries of murderers.
Condemning the wrongdoings of violent people in our community is the right thing to do and, again, in no way normalizes Palestinian terrorism. Condemning price-tag violence from Jewish extremists only makes us a better society.
The writer is a social media activist with over 10 years of experience working for Israeli, Jewish and cause-based NGOs. She is the co-founder and the COO of Social Lite Creative, a digital marketing firm specializing in geopolitics.