Friday 2 August 2002

A top Israeli says settlers incited riot in Hebron

When is the world going to wake up to the fact that we have a genocidal maniac in charge of the world's 5th most powerful military force!

Source: Boston Globe

TEL AVIV - A senior Israeli official who witnessed rioting that killed a Palestinian girl in Hebron on Sunday has declared that the violence was not set off by Palestinian stone throwers, as Israeli settlers claimed, but was ''a pogrom against the Arabs of Hebron, with no provocations on the Palestinian side.''

''Dozens of thugs, including youths from Hebron, burst into Arab houses for no reason,'' Moshe Givati, a chief adviser to the government on relations with the settlers, told the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz. The settlers ''broke windows, destroyed property, and threw stones. These people were there for the purpose of making a pogrom.''

This is the first time such charges have been made by a senior military man with pro-settler associations - factors that make the charges difficult for the settlers and their supporters to brush aside.