The disgrace of Israel’s aid-blocking, right-wing militia
A damaged trailer truck that was carrying humanitarian aid supplies is parked after it was vandalized by right-wing Israeli attackers, May 2024
The Haaretz lead editorial on 22 May 2024:
Right-wing activists obstructing trucks carrying aid to Gaza are operating like militias for all intents and purposes. The permissive attitude with which their activities are being received is evidence of the deep and spreading rot in Israel under the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Justice Minister Bezalel Smotrich. Militia activists were filmed this week stopping Palestinian trucks in Jerusalem, demanding their drivers’ licenses and even conducting searches of trucks to verify that they weren’t carrying food. In one of the videos posted by Haaretz reporter Nir Hasson, militia members can be seen functioning like an IDF checkpoint on their own behalf, with police officers present in the vicinity and not disturbing them in their task.
The sabotage has been constant and systematic, with some added physical violence. On Friday, settlers attacked a truck driver who was passing the settlement of Kokhav Hashahar after they suspected that he was hauling humanitarian aid to Gaza, and they struck reservists who were dispatched to the scene and who, according to a security source, tried to provide treatment to the driver. A day before, militia activists threw a rock at a Palestinian truck driver, wounding him in the head, over the same suspicion.
Video footage shows that the activists stopped two trucks in the vicinity of the settlement of Givat Asaf, removed their merchandise, let the air out of their tires and burned tires on the road. In one video, the truck driver is seen wounded on the ground, as soldiers, including an officer with the rank of major, passed near him. A few days before that, two trucks with humanitarian assistance headed for the Gaza Strip were torched near the Tarqumiya crossing in a convoy that was stopped and looted by right-wing activists.
The extreme right-wing Lo Nishkach movement – young people from the national religious right wing, mostly youth – is behind these despicable acts. Through a WhatsApp messaging group, the activists are dispatched to intersections around the country, in part by officials in the army and police (Haaretz, May 21, by Bar Peleg and Eden Solomon). The fact that Kahanist Itamar Ben-Gvir, a vocal critic of providing humanitarian assistance, heads the government ministry responsible for the police, only reinforces the militias’ sense of authority and lack of fear.
In recent months, European countries and the United States have announced a series of sanctions against extreme-right activists in Israel who are involved in violence against Palestinians. It’s impossible to separate the international intervention – whether through sanctions or international court orders – from the politicization of the police and the weakness of the Israeli judicial system in the face of violence by the extreme right on both sides of the 1967 Green Line. Israel has to renounce the extreme right and the person who has cultivated it into monstrous proportions – Netanyahu. As long as they continue to lead the country, it will decline morally and become an outcast country in the world.
This article is reproduced in its entirety