For 2 days, hundreds of settlers rampaged through the West Bank, burning, destroying, and shooting live fire, resulting in the death of at least one Palestinian and injuring tens. But it isn’t just on them. It’s on the entire Israeli security establishment, and especially the IDF The attacks were organized openly in Whatsapp and Telegram groups, and began hours before the murdered body of 14 year old Binyamin Ahimeir was found. What stopped security forces from preventing these mass acts of violence? Probably the will to do so.

The heated discussion surrounding director Jonathan Glazer’s speech at the Oscars last night is mostly missing the point. His main message was simple and yet vital: empathy is not a zero-sum game.
Glazer did not "deny his Jewishness", as some seemingly purposely misunderstood. He took an unequivocal stance against the cynical utilization of Judaism and the Holocaust in the name of justifying the occupation. These "misunderstandings" aren't new.

https://twitter.com/BtSIsrael/status/1762857342960296096

"Everyone knows that people are taking things."
Soldiers are publishing videos of things they've looted from Gaza and giving interviews about it. This is how looting is normalized in Israel @972mag @OrenZiv_
🧵
972mag.com/israeli-soldie… But there's nothing new about looting.
"The bribing thing was acceptable, they pay you with their masbahas (prayer beads), packs of cigarettes, chocolate, whatever you want—they give you," one former soldier told us after serving in the West Bank in 2002.
breakingthesilence.org.il/testimonies/da…

Finance Minister Smotrich has already explained that the US sanctions on violent settlers stem from a "false and anti-Semitic BDS campaign". So in the face of the shameless denials, here are some things you need to know about the settlers on the US and British sanction lists 🧵 Ely Federman - a settler from the "Meitarim Farm" outpost. Was documented as being involved in repeated violence against Palestinians and HR activists including: home invasions, threats, destruction of property and setting his dog on local Palestinians.

"But we left Gaza” is a commonly heard statement in Israel, referring to the situation since 2005’s “disengagement”, during which Israel withdrew its military forces and settlements from the Strip. “We dismantled settlements, took our forces out, and let Gaza become Singapore.”🧵 But in reality, Israel figured out it could control the Gaza Strip even without forces on the ground. We left Gaza, but continued to control the entrance and exit of goods and people, the air and maritime space, the electromagnetic space, and even the population registry.

Following the tragic erroneous shooting of 3 Israeli hostages by IDF soldiers, the IDF's immediate response was that the soldiers had deviated from the rules of engagement.
But those deviations aren't the main problem. The rules themselves are. 🧵 The hostages were shot despite doing everything they possibly could to show they weren’t a threat: they removed their shirts, shouted in Hebrew and waved a white flag. They were shot from tens of meters away, so it's hard to argue the soldiers' would have been in direct danger.

While the current death toll and scope of destruction are significantly higher than in the past, there is still valuable information we can learn from looking back at past military operations in the Gaza Strip.
This is how we fought in Gaza in 2014 🧵 Our work at Breaking the Silence is based on testimonies given by soldiers. Collecting and verifying these testimonies is a long and complex process, and it will be quite some time before we get a full and accurate picture of what’s happening on the ground.

Since the horrific massacre by Hamas on October 7th, the West Bank has been on fire. More Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank than in any year since 2005. That’s over 220 people in a little less than two months.

At least eight of them were killed by armed settlers
🧵 Prior to 7/10, WB violence was escalating; since, it's a tsunami. Consider the IDF’s incursion to Jenin, which reintroduced airstrikes to WB - now almost the norm. In Tulkarm, Hamas executed two Palestinians claiming collaboration. We haven’t seen this level of violence in years.

The Israeli right has a focus right now. The goal? Resettle the Gaza Strip.

Their way to establish it in the hearts and minds of Israelis: to aggressively push the false notion that the 2005 disengagement was the main failure that led to this moment. This lie must be debunked
🧵 Their claims ignore Netanyahu's cynical support of Hamas, meant to prevent a Palestinian state; They also unsurprisingly choose to ignore how a majority of IDF units were deployed to guard settlements and outposts in the West Bank before and during the October 7th Hamas massacre.

Everyone’s blood is boiling. We all know someone who was murdered, kidnapped, who is still missing. Many are talking about revenge, about erasing Gaza, referring to its residents as “2.5M terrorists,” discussing forcible transfer.

But what's actually happening on the ground?🧵 Gaza has been under an unprecedented bombardment for a month now. In the first two weeks alone, the Israeli Air Force dropped more bombs on Gaza than the US dropped on Afghanistan in an entire year. One explanation is Israel’s genuine need to remove threats to ground forces, >>>

Hamas and PIJ committed acts of unfathomable savagery against thousands of innocent civilians - Men, women, children and even babies.

Israel’s response, fueled by revenge, is causing mass civilian deaths in Gaza. This is how the current policy is unfolding on the ground
🧵 Israel cut off Gaza's water and electricity supply and began an aerial bombardment. IDF Spox said that "our focus is on damage, not on precision." A senior air force officer said that these are not "surgical attacks" and that the 'knock on the roof' technique, "isn't relevant".

We, members of the undersigned human rights organizations in Israel, are shocked and horrified in these dreadful days. Our full joint statement:
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Let it be crystal clear: Hamas committed crimes that should horrify any decent person. As people who firmly criticize Israeli policy in Gaza and the West Bank on a daily basis, it is our duty to state things as they are: Hamas has blatantly violated humanity’s basic moral norms🧵 It’s impossible to justify the massacres of hundreds of civilians – even in the name of anti-colonial struggle or popular struggle. It is impossible to construct theoretical justifications for the kidnapping of mothers and their children, of senior citizens, of teenagers.

Hamas's attack and the events unfolding since yesterday are unspeakable. We could talk about their cruel and criminal actions, or focus on how our Jewish-supremacist govt brought us to this point. But as former Israeli soldiers, our job is to talk about what we were sent to do
🧵 Israel's security policy, for decades now, has been to “manage the conflict”. Successive Israeli governments insist on round after round of violence as if any of it will make a difference. They talk about “security”, “deterrence”, “changing the equation”.

Israel's judicial overhaul isn't just about getting Netanyahu out of his corruption trial. It's about paving the way for full on annexation of the oPt.
Let’s go back and take a closer look at just a few of the orgs who organized a massive pro-overhaul demo earlier this week:
🧵 Let's start with Regavim, who posted drone images from the demo. What do their drones do the rest of the time? They "monitor" Palestinian construction so that Regavim can inform the Israeli authorities straight away on illegal construction - which happens all the time, since, as>

“Israel's hand is extended in peace” & "True peace cannot be anchored in violence," President Herzog told Congress yesterday.
Here is just a partial list of the acts of violence the State of Israel has been directly responsible for in the last couple of months alone.
🧵>>> Last night, just hours after Herzog's speech, hundreds of settlers and their supporters (including Israel's Chief of Police) entered Nablus for a religious pilgrimage. Soldiers were sent to prevent Palestinian residents from accessing their own streets >> haaretz.com/israel-news/20…

A Pogrom took place in Huwara two days ago.

From inciting calls to violence beforehand to justification afterwards, Israeli right-wing leaders were quick to excuse - and justify - the rampage.

Smotrich's latest comments aren't the only ones. Just take a look:
🧵>>> "I liked a tweet that called to erase the village of Huwara because I think the village of Huwara needs to be erased. The state of Israel is the one that needs to erase it."

Bezalel Smotrich, Finance Minister, MK Religious Zionism party

The Huwara Pogrom was state-sanctioned violence. The settlers rampaged with impunity because they know they have the state on their side. Their leaders sit in Netanyahu’s ultranationalist coalition and regularly call for incitement. Only yesterday, MK Smotrich was given enormous governing power over the West Bank -- the same day he liked a tweet by the deputy head of a regional council which called to “erase” Hawara from the map.

A thread about rhinos and the face of Israel in 2022.

'Rhinocéros', a French play written in 1959, is about a society where everyone turns into rhinos, except for the protagonist- an analogy for the rise of fascism and the mob mentality and conformism that allowed it to happen. The play led to the Hebrew term 'lehitkarnef', 'to rhinocerize', being coined to describe getting caught up in a nationalist fervor.

Mainstream Israeli society has been going in this direction for years, but it's now impossible to ignore how rhinocerized our society has become.

Today, Israel's new government is being sworn in. Take a look at its members.
By anyone's standards, this will be the most hardline, ultranationalist and illiberal government Israel has ever known. Incoming ministers include a man who has been found guilty of supporting a terrorist organization; a man who called for forced transfer of Palestinians and organized the 'Beast March' to protest the Pride March; and a man who publicly called for another Nakba.

Following recent violence against Palestinians and anti-occupation activists in Hebron, today we're back - 100s of us, on a special tour in partnership with 30+ anti-occupation orgs - to see the occupation & show solidarity with those who were attacked.

We'll be tweeting here >>

https://twitter.com/BtSIsrael/status/1596858727247892484

We're now in Kiryat Arba, a settlement just outside Hebron. We're in a park named after Meir Kahana, an outspoken Jewish supremacist whose party was outlawed and whose movement is classified as a terrorist org.
His follower Itamar BenGvir is soon to become a senior minister.