Anti-Israel organizations tell a twisted story about an intensely violent incident that took place on 28 September 2021 in the South Hebron Hills region of Judea-Samaria. The story has become a major coup in the ongoing battle to delegitimize Israel whereby the current battlefield is in the hearts of minds of those around the world who know little about what really happens on the ground.
Labeled the West Bank by Jordan when it occupied the area between 1948 and 1967, Judea-Samaria (J&S) is the site of the two ancient Israelite kingdoms and it is the heartland of Israel. As a result of the Oslo Accords of the mid 1990s, its administration is now divided between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) according to three distinct areas: A — controlled exclusively by the PA, B — administered in civilian issues by the PA with security shared by the PA and Israel, C — controlled exclusively by Israel. The current battle is over Area C.
All Jewish settlements are located in Area C. At the same time, within Area C, there are islands of Arab communities and these are under the auspices of the PA (in other words, these villages are Area B). The land itself, however, is administered by Israel and outside the bounds of the recognized villages building permits must be obtained from the Israeli administration. That means that when Arabs (supported by the PA and with funds provided by European governments) set up outposts in Area C without permits, these outposts are illegal and, unless the land can be proven in court to be privately owned Arab land, they are legitimately demolished.
El-Mufaqara, the site of the violent incident under discussion here, is one such illegal outpost. El-Mufaqara lies in a dip in the hills between the Jewish communities of Avigayil and Maon/Havat Maon.
The initial reports
The incident at el-Mufaqara was widely reported in Israel when the well funded anti-Zionist Israeli NGO, B’Tselem, first brought it to light. Their video apparently formed the basis for what was known about the incident; however, it is common knowledge that B’Tselem hands out cameras to Palestinian Arabs for them to document what they call unprovoked settler violence, beginning to film only after the Jews start responding violently to being attacked, the initiation of the attack being left out of the video documentation. I have also heard these accusations from former IDF soldiers who have witnessed the phenomenon first-hand.
Without any consideration of that fact, mainstream news and social media — in Israel and abroad, leftwing and rightwing — were filled with condemnations of this most recent example of ‘unprovoked settler violence’. Even members of the Israeli government were quick to label the settlers and demand ‘justice’ just hours after the events took place, taking the word of B’Tselem as if their report was fully consistent what really happened. A suggestion that conclusions should wait until after an investigation was never raised.
The initial reports were contradictory with different numbers of Arabs and Jews reportedly involved in the incident, from a few to dozens of Jews. In some reports only some of the Arabs threw rocks in defence, in others there was no mention of Arab rock throwing. In some reports, the army stood by and did nothing; in others, soldiers threw tear gas and stun grenades at the Arab villagers. In some reports the violence began in the hills outside el-Mufaqara and in others inside the village.
In an article, parts of which were republished on numerous news sites, Associated Press wrote:
“Dozens of Israeli settlers attacked a Palestinian village in the occupied West Bank, hurling stones at cars and homes and leaving several people wounded, including a Palestinian toddler, activists said Wednesday.
Video of Tuesday’s attack released by an Israeli rights group [B’Tselem] showed several shirtless settlers with scarves wrapped around their faces hurling stones at a cluster of homes and vehicles. Israeli troops stood among the settlers but did not appear to be taking any action to stop them.
Sami Hureini, a local Palestinian activist, said a group of Israeli settlers attacked a Palestinian shepherd near the village of Mufaqara and slaughtered four of his sheep. He said they then stormed the village itself, attacking residents with clubs and stones.”
Of all the articles I read, in both Hebrew and English, only the Hebrew leftwing news site, Haaretz, quoted a statement from the South Hebron Hills Regional Council Head, Yochai Damari, writing:
“The picture that emerges is complex.” He said that the Israeli settlers don’t live in the region and that they claimed that they were attacked with stones. … He added that the vehicle of a security guard of the Havat Maon settler outpost was damaged by stones, . . .”
Given the contradictory reports, the only thing readers could be sure of is that Jews and Arabs threw rocks at each other that Tuesday afternoon; some of this happened in the hills outside the Arab village and some inside the village, causing property damage and 3-year-old Mohammad was injured and hospitalized. We do not know what the IDF did or did not do, how many Jews or Arabs were involved, nor how it started, with all but Damari accusing the Jews of attacking and Damari suggesting that the Jews acted in self-defense.
There is no context provided in any of the reports. Did the Jews just wake up that morning and decide to attack Arabs? That seems to be something the anti-Zionist organizations want readers to believe with their consistently one-sided reports. Interestingly, the Jerusalem Post inserted an image just under the headline of their article showing an Arab throwing rocks and claiming that two-dozen times a day, rocks are thrown at Israeli cars on Highway 60. Nobody seems to question if this has anything to do with ‘unprovoked settler violence’.
In fact, recently released official data provides the proof of what Jewish residents of J&S have long contended — that is, that they are confronted with about 18 terrorist attacks of various forms (stabbings, rock throwing, Molotov cocktails, car rammings) each and every day. Will knowing this, and knowing that B’Tselem activists turn their cameras on only when Jews begin to defend themselves, ensure more balanced coverage of future violent incidents in which Jews are accused of inciting violence? Given the speed at which news reporters and elected officials fell into the same lockstep with disclosure of a new incident on Friday morning at the village of Burin (21 Jan), this seems unlikely.
I am sure that there are Jewish settlers who instigate violent attacks, but we should not assume that this is the norm. Each incident should be analyzed on its own.
Is there another side to the story?
Damari raised the possibility that the Jews were responding to Arab violence but perhaps such a claim is to be expected from a politician whose job is to take care of the interests of the population who voted him into office. However, a video in a report on the Hebrew station, Channel 20 was soon brought to my attention. In the video, Arabs are seen moving up the hills toward Havat Maon. A few are launching rocks with slingshots in the direction of the Jewish community. It was initially unclear to me what this had to do with the events of the day.
The video is credited to an organization called Ayin L’Tsion. CEO Ari Kaniel, a private investigator by profession, told a story that sounded very different from the one in the news. Kaniel explained that were two parts to the incident on Simchat Torah. The first, the one reported in the news, occurred when a group of residents and visitors to Havat Maon hiked the few kilometers from there to the community in Avigayil. About an hour after this first incident, a few dozen Arabs amassed in the hills preparing to storm Havat Maon. At the sound of their approach, Ayin L’Zion volunteers got out their cameras to document it.
Kaniel said that the IDF arrived quickly at this point, before the Arabs could enter Havat Maon. None of the Arabs in the video were arrested in spite of the fact that their faces are clearly seen and this part of the day’s events was not mentioned in the news or on social media.
A visit to the site of the violence
The story was still skeletal. In order to find out what really happened that day, I travelled to the region and met with people from Havat Maon and Avigayil and spoke with the regional council spokeswoman. I was unable to obtain interviews with residents of el-Mufaqara. It is impossible to say how different their stories would be from what we find in the news.
Until that day in September, relations between the Arab residents of el-Mufaqara and the Jewish residents of Avigayil and Havat Maon were quite cordial. In fact, just a few days before the violent incident, four sheep ran off from a Jewish shepherd’s flock. An Arab from a neighboring outpost held the sheep and called out to the Jew to come get them, sharing a cup of tea at the same time. And that was not an unusual story.
Some of the Jews and the Arabs were friends, visiting each other in their homes. Residents of Avigayil felt safe hiking in the hills outside their community (a community without a perimeter fence, in fact). When I first visited the area to gather information about the violence it was unclear whether or not these relationships were now permanently shattered. When I visited again in December, however, it appears that things had quieted down. In fact, one Avigayil resident told me that one of the anti-occupation activists, living in el-Mufaqara, recently referred to the people of Avigayil as “good people”. This shows the complexity of relationships in Judea-Samaria.
Walking between Havat Maon and Avigayil necessitates walking on a dirt road alongside el-Mufaqara. It was not unusual for Jews to walk this road. This time, however, a group of Arab men are said to have come out from the outpost, attacking them with rocks and sticks. Instead of scampering away in fear, these unarmed Jews picked up rocks and drove the Arabs back into the village. The fighting continued until the IDF came. The army used tear gas to break up the hostilities on both sides and the Jews continued on to Havat Maon and this part of the incident was over.
Someone who knows the residents of el-Mufaqara well told me that the Arab instigators were not from there but B’Tselem activists (Jews and Arabs) living in a-Tawani, a legal town very close by. We know that there are two Jewish activists living in the home of Basel Adra of B’Tselem because B’Tselem uploaded a Facebook post showing the IDF raiding the place and taking their laptops for investigation. I can no longer find that post so perhaps it was taken down.
The Jewish youth were not attacked on their way from Havat Maon to Avigayil but on their way back again. It is possible that, knowing they would be returning by foot the same way they came, an ambush was prepared. This is speculation on the part of someone I spoke with.
In this incident, three Jews were seriously injured and about ten lightly injured. Some Jews refused to be taken to the hospital as they were afraid of being arrested if they went in for medical treatment. This is not a stretch because, in fact, Justice Havi Toker released two of five Jews arrested for allegedly taking part in the violence, saying she could not avoid the impression that they were picked up because of their appearance – being religious Jews.
The Israeli Police Spokesperson’s Office informed me that a number of Arabs and Jews were arrested for their part in the incident at el-Mufaqara. Indictments were brought down for some of them (Jews? Arabs?) and one suspect is being handled by the IDF prosecution.
The demonization grows
Combatants for Peace sent out an email to subscribers in which they wrote:
“Settlers came down from the hills, masked and armed. They started by killing villager’s sheep and destroying any existing water pipes. Then, they began attacking villagers. They went from house to house, smashing windows and cars with machetes and knives. They attacked shepherds and threw stones at children – and one small boy, aged three years old, is in the hospital with internal bleeding. When the villagers attempted to protect themselves, the Israeli military defended the settlers, furthering the attack by throwing tear-gas at the villagers. The attack was described in the media as a ‘pogrom’.”
By ‘media’ they mean 972 Magazine, an unabashedly anti-Israel website. Calling this a ‘pogrom’ can be considered as cultural appropriation – taking the term applied to massacres of Jews in Imperial Russia and later other places and now using it against Jews in an incident in which nobody died.
Everyone I spoke to denied that any sheep were killed or children stoned. I forgot to ask about pipes being destroyed. And remember, walking on the road passing by el-Mufaqara was a usual occurrence — turning this into “settlers came down from the hills, masked and armed. . .” is perhaps an inventive exaggeration of teenagers literally and figuratively drunk on the holiday, disturbing the quiet of these ancient hills.
With no films of Jews doing these crimes, journalists reporting on the incident should have wondered why. If Jews actually had killed sheep, why was there no video of this? If Jews threw stones at kids, why was there no video of this? Surely B’Tselem would not miss the opportunity to take incriminating videos of this nature?
Furthermore, the only B’Tselem video available shows fighting outside the village, with nobody going house to house, no Jew wielding a machete or a knife. Basel Adra, a ‘journalist’ for B’Tselem, was on location and he reported on the incident. Adra lives in a-Tawani so one must also ask at what point he arrived at the scene: Did he rush out when he heard about it or was he already there when it began (meaning he knew it was going to happen in advance)?
I found a single photograph of a slaughtered sheep (unfortunately, I do not remember where I saw it), but a single slaughtered sheep photographed without a date stamp does not tell a story — perhaps it was slaughtered by Arabs for their own dinner table.
None of the questions raised here were ever dealt with in any of the news reports I read, not in the immediate aftermath of the incident and not later in retrospect. It is as if there is an accepted version of the events of Simchat Torah 2021 and nobody felt the need to explore any alternative possibilities.
I inquired about an investigation, asking both the IDF Spokesperson and the Police. The Police stated that the investigation is still pending. The IDF Spokesperson’s Office responded with this:
“The IDF is committed to the well-being of all residents in the area and acts to prevent violence within its area of responsibility and is in direct contact with the various security forces in these regions.”
A particularly curious moment
After that vague response from the IDF spokesperson’s office, I inquired specifically about the report by HaKol Heyehudi regarding an Arab supposedly beginning to set a building on fire and calling out that the Jews did it. This is their response:
“During the incident an officer among the troops noticed a Palestinian lighting a building on fire, who later claimed that the building was set on fire by Jews.”
This is the exact same response the IDF gave to HaKol Hayehudi on 5 October 2021. Basel Adra responded to the accusation at that time with a video of his own on the B’Tselem Facebook page in which he showed smoldering brush supposedly from an IDF tear gas canister, saying that this was really what the soldier saw and not someone setting a building on fire. That video has since disappeared. Given that, and the fact that the IDF has not backed down from their original statement, it appears that we can accept the original version as the correct one: Adra was foiled in his attempt to raise the bar on the supposedly criminal acts of the Jews.
This open provocation on the part of Adra should have led journalists to question how much of the B’Tselem version of the incident could be accepted unconditionally. Yet the anti-Israeli narrative of that day continues to be used as ammunition in the war against Jewish residents in Judea-Samaria. The el-Mufaqara story has become an icon in intensifying demonization of the residents of J&S, already having to defend their choice of residence and now having to contend with repeated accusations of ‘unprovoked settler violenc’ that are never tested in a court of law.
It takes only a moment to upload a photo or video of rock-throwing Jews or of a burning car and to accuse the settlers of being violent criminals trying to rid the land of the Arabs. It takes hours and hours of work to investigate whether there is any truth behind the claims. Until now, it seems nobody has taken up the gauntlet.
