Israeli condemnations ring hollow after settler pogrom in Jit
The interior of a house burned by settlers in the Palestinian town of Jit, 16 August 2024
Oren Ziv reports in +972 on 19 August 2024:
As night fell, settlers descended upon the village. “There were more than a hundred of them — masked and armed with guns and clubs. They smashed the windows of my two cars and threw gasoline inside, setting them alight along with the entrance to my home. We rushed out with water to try to douse the flames. We had nothing to protect ourselves with except stones.”
This was the scene on August 15, as described by Ibrahim Sidda, in the Palestinian town of Jit — the latest in the occupied West Bank to suffer a pogrom at the hands of Israeli settlers. Sidda was at home, enjoying a meal with his family, when the invaders arrived. “We are peace-loving people,” he told +972 after the attack, still in disbelief at what had befallen him and his community.
In all, the settlers burned three cars and four houses, but their violence didn’t stop at property damage: they attacked any Palestinian who dared to come out and try to defend themselves and their families, shooting dead 23-year-old IT technician Rashid Sidda and wounding five more. According to Ibrahim Sidda, it took Israeli soldiers around an hour to arrive and put a stop to the pogrom; another testimony published in Haaretz alleged that soldiers were present in the town during the attack and did nothing to stop it.
The following morning, residents walked among the charred frames of their cars and blackened entrances to their homes, in a scene that has become eerily familiar across the West Bank in recent months. Such attacks have surged amid the war in Gaza, with settlers killing six Palestinians in the first week following October 7. In April, settlers rampaged through more than a dozen Palestinian towns and villages in one weekend, killing at least three people and burning hundreds of homes, cars, and businesses.