Six attacks every single day.
Settler attacks at a record high
After Israel launched its genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, settler violence against Palestinians across the Occupied West Bank reached record highs. And in recent months, as Israel’s far-right government scrambles to consolidate its control over stolen Palestinian land, settler violence has accelerated even further — in both the frequency and brutality of attacks.
Israeli settlers are now carrying out an average of six attacks every single day, the highest rate on record. Working hand-in-glove with the Israeli military, armed settlers raid Palestinian communities, destroy homes and property, steal livestock, and displace and kill Palestinians with impunity. In a recent attack, armed settlers descended on the Palestinian village of Deir Jarir. They were soon joined by Israeli soldiers, who shot and killed two Deir Jarir residents. “It’s a partnership between the army and the settlers,” said the father of 26-year-old Abdul Adel Rashid Abu Mukh, one of the two men killed by Israeli soldiers that day.
This deadly attack came on the heels of the murder of 17-year-old Fadi Hamdallah al-Nassan, who played for the Palestinian youth national football team. As settlers raided his village, Fadi heard screaming and ran to help. He was then shot by Israeli soldiers and died days later. “He was a good student, good in sports, and loved playing football. Everyone loved him,” said his mother, Hanan al-Nassan.
The Israeli military has long permitted and defended settler violence against Palestinians. But the last few years have inaugurated a new normal: one where the Israeli state openly arms settlers and “scenes of uniformed soldiers at the head of roving settler militias” are common. An analysis from the Guardian found that the Israeli state has not prosecuted a single instance of Israeli citizens murdering Palestinian civilians during this decade.
This total impunity has emboldened Israeli settlers, who have carried out over 1,000 attacks on Palestinian villages this year alone and forced some 2,200 Palestinians to flee their homes. And it underscores the absence of any rule of law in the West Bank, where even a U.S. Congressman, Ro Khanna, was recently detained, intimidated, and harassed by armed settlers while on a diplomatic visit to the Occupied West Bank. “It’s the most powerless I have felt,” said Rep. Khanna, whose van was blocked for hours by cars full of settlers brandishing assault rifles.
Escalating settler violence forms another front of Israel’s genocide, where settlers carry out Israeli state policy — the theft of Palestinian land and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians — with the protection and backing of the Israeli military.
Scrambling to steal as much Palestinian land as possible
As settler attacks skyrocket, Israel’s far-right government is scrambling to consolidate and increase its control over stolen Palestinian land in the months before elections this October, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition risks losing its grip on power.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, an anti-Palestinian racist and settler extremist under sanctions by multiple European countries, just announced more than $400 million in funding to construct dozens of new illegal settlements in the West Bank. The Israeli state has funded and approved the construction of such illegal settlements in the West Bank at a record rate in recent years, multiplying the number of outposts from which militant settlers launch their attacks on Palestinian villages.
Now, while they remain in power, Israel’s far-right leadership is pushing to apply that same playbook in Gaza.
Smotrich, alongside war criminal and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, led a march last week at the Gaza border demanding reestablishment of illegal Israeli settlements there. Another extremist settler leader who joined the march has called for Palestinians to “disappear” from Gaza. The same week, Israel’s Defense Minister announced three new Israeli military outposts in Northern Gaza — outposts designed to pave the way for establishing permanent settlements.
Israeli attacks on Gaza continue to escalate
While armed settlers and soldiers terrorize Palestinians in the West Bank, Israel is escalating its genocidal assault on Gaza. Israeli attacks are at their highest level since the so-called “ceasefire” was reached last October. Between July 13-20, the Israeli military killed at least 57 Palestinians, including six children. Last Friday, Israeli strikes killed 14 Palestinians and wounded 37 in a single day — including a strike on a funeral procession that killed at least eight people.
This increase in Israeli attacks comes alongside the further expansion of Israeli territorial control. Israeli forces continue to move the “yellow line” dividing Gaza further west, expanding the area under Israeli occupation to 70% of Gaza’s total territory and forcing even more Palestinians to flee their homes. During the most recent expansion of the “yellow line,” Israeli forces issued evacuation orders for multiple buildings, including homes and a hall where a wedding was being held, before bombing those buildings. Another strike hit a makeshift tent where displaced Palestinians were sheltering, killing a young man and wounding three other people.
Raiding Palestinian villages, bombing tents, shooting children — from the West Bank to Gaza, the Israeli state is engaged in a genocide against the Palestinian people. Its aim is clear: to erase Palestinians from Palestine.
Call to block funding for war and a U.S.-Israeli military merger.
The House of Representatives recently passed a bill that increases funds for war and essentially merges the U.S. and Israeli militaries. Now that bill heads to the Senate, and we need to stop it.
Call your Senators now and demand they REJECT legislation that would expand U.S. cooperation with the genocidal Israeli military.
What we’re reading: The missing in Gaza.
Abdel Qader Sabbah and Mohamed Ahmed write for Drop Site about the over 9,000 Palestinians still missing in Gaza and their families’ desperate search for their loved ones — under the rubble, in Israeli prisons, and at the “cemetery of the missing,” where hundreds of unidentified bodies have yet to be claimed.
What we’re reading: NYC’s fight to divest.
In the New York Daily News, JVP-NYC members Cara Levine and Danny Kaplowitz connect the recent pro-Palestine, progressive insurgent victories in NYC to the fight to divest the city from its Israel Bonds holdings — and call on the current NYC comptroller, Mark Levine, to commit to not reinvesting the city’s funds in Israeli genocide.
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