Pogromists rule the West Bank
Aftermath of settlers’ raid on West Bank village of Duma on 1 April 2025
The lead editorial in Haaretz on 3 April 2025:
Recent weeks have seen settlers violently rampaging through the West Bank in a spate of attacks that are extreme even by usual West Bank standards. The latest victim was the village of Duma, which was raided on Tuesday evening by dozens of settlers, who torched vehicles and buildings (Hagar Shezaf, Haaretz, April 1).
The timing of the pogrom was symbolic. In early April of last year, settlers raided Duma and the neighboring village of Al-Mughayyir, setting fire to much property, stoning and shooting at their inhabitants. This came after the murder of Binyamin Ahimeir, a teenage boy. One person was killed by gunfire in Al-Mughayyir. No one was prosecuted for participating in these attacks. Yedioth Ahronoth photographer Shaul Golan was attacked in that incident, and to this day no indictment has been filed over that attack.
Since the forming of the radical right-wing Netanyahu government, participants in these pogroms have been receiving a clear message: carry on. This message is conveyed by the police and army, neither of which arrests perpetrators in real time, by soldiers actively participating in expelling shepherd communities across the West Bank and by Defense Minister Israel Katz suspending administrative detentions, but only for Jews, thereby emasculating whatever was left of the mechanism to prevent such attacks. There is also National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has been mobilized on behalf of Jewish security prisoners while further weakening the police’s Judea and Samaria District.
During the term of former IDF chief of staff Herzl Halevi, the army’s responses to these attacks became increasingly feeble. The army distributed weapons to settlers, drafting even the most extreme among them. It allowed them to torment their neighbors without addressing the participation of conscript soldiers in violent incidents. The result was a total loosening of the reins
The incident in Duma was a direct continuation of what had occurred less than a week earlier in the village of Jinba: a pogrom by settlers, which evolved into a revenge campaign of soldiers against the villagers. Perhaps the response of the new chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, who went to the village to investigate the incident, marks a changing trend. Indeed, the penalties meted out to some of the participants, with reprimands to the relevant brigade, battalion and company commanders, the dismissal of one officer and jail sentences for some soldiers, although not concordant with the severity of the incident, may signal a positive new direction.
However, the chief of staff must address deeper problems by getting a grip on rogue regional defense battalions, by removing arms that were hastily distributed and by not stopping to dispense localized penalties, but ensuring that the investigative military police is brought in to open quick and effective probes.
Above it all looms the root problem, which is a pogromist government that advances the occupation, expropriation and apartheid policies. This is a government espousing Jewish supremacy, giving a tailwind to pogroms against Palestinians, sullying Israel’s image and making more distant any possibility of a joint future in this area.
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