Israel's Smotrich Calls for Palestinian Town to be Wiped Out, Even U.S. Condemns Comment
Even the U.S. State Department condemned the comment
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Bezalel Smotrich, the Israeli finance minister, told a business conference on Wednesday that he believes the Palestinian village of Hawara “needs to be wiped out” and he thinks “the State of Israel should do it.”
Smotrich’s comment came after Israeli forces attacked Palestinian villages in the occupied West Bank on Sunday night seeking revenge for the two Israelis who were shot dead by a Palestinian gunman the night before.
Smotrich liked a tweet that called for Israel to show no mercy and that the “village of Huwwara should be erased today,” Middle East Eye reported.
Buildings, homes, and cars were set on fire, which resulted in the death of at least one Palestinian man, a 37-year-old who was shot in the stomach. Witnesses said these Israeli “settlers” were supported by the Israeli army.
The brother of the man shot dead said the Israeli army shot his brother, not the settlers, a claim Israel denied. The victim was a blacksmith who had just returned after volunteering in Turkey after the earthquake. The brother said the 37-year-old ended up bleeding to death because the IDF would not clear the way for an ambulance.
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Smotrich, a far-right settler, vowed in January that Israel will strengthen its grip in the West Bank and aims to spend billions on developing infrastructure and take more Palestinian land to build settlements.
Smotrich’s comments drew ire from the Palestinian Authority that said it is a “stab in the heart of the whole idea of the two-state negotiated solution sponsored by the United States.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made settlement expansion in Judea and Samaria, the biblical names for the West Bank, a top priority, which almost guarantees violent clashes with Palestinians.
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While Israel calls them “settlements,” they are illegal land grabs under international law. They violate Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 which states, “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”
Israel’s latest crackdown is hardly mentioned in the Western media because those who criticize any Israeli policy are quickly written off as anti-Semitic. The so-called anti-terror offensive has resulted in 62 Palestinian deaths since the start of the year. Raids have occurred on a near-nightly basis and resulted in more than 2,500 arrests.
Ned Price, the U.S. State Department spokesman, called Smotrich’s comment “irresponsible, repugnant and disgusting.”
Smotrich in a statement later that his comments were taken out of context and he only meant to “act in a surgical way against terrorists and their supporters in the village in order to restore the security,” Axios noted.
TRENDPOST: Rashid Khalidi, the Palestinian historian and professor at Columbia University, told Vox that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken had to use the empty words when he recently spoke about a two-state solution because he would otherwise have to talk about the true conditions on the ground.
He said Blinken would be forced to say, “We don’t care about the Palestinians. We know that Israel is going to do what it wants with them. There will never be an independent, sovereign Palestinian state.”